In Conversation With Daniel Eatock
Sophia Whitehead, Time Based Arts 26/10/2026
Daniel Eatock is a London-based artist, known for his inventive, idea-driven approach that blurs the lines between art and design. Born in Bolton, he went on to train at Ravensbourne and the Royal College of Art. Daniel’s work spans graphic design, sculpture and participatory projects. His practice is rooted in humour, chance and an embrace of contradiction.
Daniel’s latest show ‘Rainbow Permutations’, recently on view at Art Practice Gallery, takes the rainbow’s familiar seven concentric bands and rearranges them to answer a singular question; how many ways can a rainbow’s colour sequence be arranged?
We caught up with Daniel to learn more about his early creative influences, his practice and the intention behind this latest exhibition.
TBA: Do you remember your first artwork and if so, what was it?
DE: Yes, very clearly and it fits so well with this exhibition. I went on holiday when I was 16 with a friend to the South of France. We were sitting on the beach, both drawing what we could see, umbrellas, ice creams, people etc. His drawings were insanely good. He managed to capture perfectly what was in front of us. Mine were good but nowhere near as good. So I realised no matter how hard I would try or the amount of practice I would do, he had an ability that I didn’t. So, I started to wonder; what can I do? Where is my talent? I sat there a bit frustrated for the whole day.
Then, at the end of the day, I made my first ever artwork. I turned the page. I drew two horizontal lines across the page, dividing it into three equal thirds. And then, in the middle of the page, dead center, I wrote “sea”, and, in the bottom third, I wrote “sand” and in the top third I wrote “sky”. Like a diagram. It felt like a breakthrough moment because whoever looks at that is seeing something different. You put your own sky in, you put your sea in, and the sand, and then you've got your own picture. And I just noticed; that's what my work is. My work is conceptual. I can capture it with an idea and the idea is more powerful because it's more truthful, because everybody will have their own interpretation.
TBA: When did you decide you wanted to be an artist?
DE: Both my mum and dad were designers. My dad had his own design studio. My mum worked with him as a typographer. So as a kid I grew up always wanting to be a graphic designer. During summer holidays, I would go to work with my dad. This was the time before computers so my dad would have layout pads and magic markers. They would have a grant enlarger, like a light box where he could trace his designs. A lot of his work was very illustrative. He did a lot of characters for Kellogg’s, Tony Tiger, Snap Crackle and Pop and Coco Monkey. That was a real heyday for that type of stuff. I knew I wanted to do something like that. I also could see how good my dad was at drawing. I remember when my dad would make these marker visuals to take to a client. He would spend a long time carefully creating the finished artwork, the sheet below would have all these beautiful blotches from the pens. I was fascinated by the shapes from the blotches and I remember thinking; those are brilliant but they were usually just thrown away.
TBA: Growing up with two designers, was it difficult to discover your own style?
DE: I saw creativity as a business because my dad was in commercial graphic design. He had a portfolio case and dressed up smartly to go to the office and do drawings. So my idea of creativity was quite formal. I knew I was creative and that I enjoyed drawing. But when I realised I wasn't that good at drawing and I had to search for a new way of doing it, to find my own voice.
That's when I went to college. I left high school and I did two years studying Graphic Design and during those two years I was really just copying the things that existed already. I was reading Emigre and Eye magazine that was showing very contemporary experimental graphics and I was just copying it. Then I started at Ravensbourne and I found a book that changed everything. It was called ‘Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972’. It was a book of art concepts and ideas, that determined the form the art was materialised.
It made me look at every design exercise that I did from that perspective going forward. I tried to resolve the brief in the most conceptual way possible and allow the visual results to be informed by the idea. From this point on I tried to break every single rule that's ever existed and that ever will exist. Things like gravity don't exist, money doesn't exist. This type of thinking really sets me free.
TBA: Who / what inspires you?
DE: I think the people that have been successful in the past are the people that have had incredible determination. They're usually outliers of some kind. I’ve always admired Ayrton Senna, for example. I think if you ask anybody that's in sports or that understands the craft of driving, then he's the person most people would refer to. He has a prophet-like quality and unwavering belief. Even in spite of the limitations he faced from a mechanical stand point, he always continued to pursue greatness. It’s like he didn’t have a choice.
I think it’s similar in art, you have to have so much belief for your art to exist. It's ridiculous really, but without this confidence in the idea, it evaporates, rapidly. When I create something, I feel as if I put myself into the most naked, vulnerable position. I welcome everything. I feel like I can get goosebumps when the temperature changes. I can hear sounds. I can sense the sun's been cut by an airplane. I can manifest, believe it into existence.
TBA: You believe ideas can be more powerful than aesthetics, tell us a little bit more about your thinking around this?
DE: In a way, an idea is indisputable. It's a thought and it doesn't need a material to be good. You can just read it. It’s like mathematics. The answer to one plus one is two but you could write it pink or red. It’s still always two. If you then find the best thing about an idea, which is often disguised, there'll be something that suggests how it should be materialised. And if the two things can fit together, then it's perfect work. I've never seen a painting or watched a film that I have truly enjoyed because I feel it is fake or staged. I just see that there's a bunch of people pretending and I find them lacking in authenticity. It's an illusion. It's not real. Whereas an idea bypasses the human somehow.
TBA: For your most recent exhibition, you explored over 5000 permutations of the rainbow, what attracted you to this line of exploration?
DE: Because it’s complete. The question that I had for myself was; given the rainbow has seven colours and the colours are the same every time; how many variations could I make? I don't have a mathematical brain, so I guessed around 30, 35. I wanted to find out for sure. So I drew them in illustrator. I started to play and then quite quickly realised I tied myself in a knot, getting lost. I paused and realised I needed to use factorial maths to work it out. There are 5,040 possible permutations. I could have stopped there but I didn’t think that was the best form for this work to exist. I needed to make them but I couldn't make them by hand myself as I knew there's a big chance I would make a mistake. So I just sat with that idea until an opportunity came to build it. I met Océane Seudre, an evolutionary and computational biologist and she loved the idea. I drew the rainbow, to the exact proportions I wanted and she generated all of the permutations. She was the conduit that allowed me to make that work and we had a beautiful relationship. And, now, people all over the world who have bought an individual print have a little piece of that relationship, which is really special.
TBA: Does the rainbow have a deeper symbolic meaning to you?
DE: I think it's one of those symbols that's universal and it's not attributed to a person. It’s a natural occurring phenomenon. It's been told in stories on cave walls throughout time. It's been used as a symbol to connect people and, ultimately, it represents peace and unity. It's full of possibilities. I can't think of a logo that's ever been designed that is better. Having a graphic design education, it’s the ultimate symbol.
TBA: What do you hope people will take away from this latest show?
DE: The exhibition, website and artwork are all connected. Anyone can access the work through the website but my ultimate goal is for all 5,039 rainbows (excluding the original) to find a home so the permutations live on forever. I think if you display something like this in your office or home it communicates a set of values. It's joyful. That's my ultimate goal; to bring positivity to all the places the rainbows live.
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What Truly Lies at the End of the Rainbow? (and 5,040 Other Questions) Perhaps our specific rainbows don’t tell us who we are, but our interpretations of them do. Molly Goldby 20/09/2026
Visiting Daniel Eatock’s Rainbow Permutations exhibit gave me a lot to think about. The collection explores how the well-known, seven-coloured rainbow symbol can be taken apart and put back together a total of 5,040 times to create unique and individual sequences using the Steinhaus-Johnson-Trotter algorithm. Whilst the original seven colours never change, their ordering does. The space featured 200 one-off CMYK prints (of the 5,040), alongside a Rainbow Map of the entire collection and a space for play and discovery. Visitors are encouraged to create their own colour combinations of the rainbow with physical coloured concentric bands. My inspiration for this piece came from the little Shoreditch studio and the discussions we had around symbol scientology and the relationships between rainbows and individuals.
Combining Science and Design
Rainbow Permutations is a great example of the two worlds of Science and Design-practise working together; the mathematical formula used to identify the significant amount of rainbow combinations and the art of colour, symbolism, feeling and questioning. Here we are taking something purely objective and merging it with the subjective. The 7-factorial is measurable, solid and based on logic and evidence, producing the same conclusion no matter who is looking at it. Design is classically subjective, it’s rooted in personal taste, individual experiences and internal observation. The merging of the two creates a space that can be enjoyed by both the lovers of logic and those that seek out experiences that they can question. The exhibit allows the lines between Science and Design to blur. Here we see that maths can be used in a creative environment and design decisions can be informed by data. This space has been built for everyone.
If objectivity as a personality trait can be measurable on a scale, I am used to sitting comfortably on the subjective end. I have always prioritised feeling and seeking topics out to question them. Even in this space that is rooted in mathematics, whilst talking to Daniel many colourful questions came to mind.
Connected through the rainbow
As visitors stack their own rainbows from the seven colours, Eatock captures and digitally collects each of them, leading to question: ‘Out of 5,040 proven rainbow sequences, will anybody reproduce the same sequence?’. Whatever the subject of my writing, normally it will find a way to relate to the invisible bonds we have to one another and the inevitability of bonds created in surprising ways. Recently, I’ve focused on our connections to others through the places and spaces we inhibit, as well as bonds made via notes left behind. I created my personal rainbow and my fate was sealed - Blue, Indigo, Green, Red, Violet, Yellow, Orange. I enjoy the romantic idea that two complete strangers could unknowingly have chosen the exact same sequence. If or when someone reproduces this combination, will I recognise our connection if we pass in the street, semi-translucent hues wrapping themselves around lamp-posts, keeping track of our individual journeys?
When thousands of rainbow permutations exist, thousands of questions inevitably crop up alongside them. Is anyone’s subconscious mind so aligned with mine that they felt compelled to pick up the same coloured pieces and place them in the same stack? Is there a science as to why we created the sequences we did? And how can our individual specific personalities be represented in colour form?
Typically within forms of creation, vulnerability can rear its head, a lot of the time due to its subjectiveness. However, this mode of play and exploration was rooted in and relied heavily on individuality and freedom. I stacked my rainbow whilst discussing the concept with Daniel Eatock - aesthetics were abandoned and the subconscious mind took over. My rainbow presented me with calming and quiet tonally-grouped hues of blue, layered above the loud vibrancies of the warmer side of the colour wheel. Does it hold a deeper meaning of representing the classic ‘introverted extrovert’ or is it as simple as my brain multi-tasking a puzzle and a conversation? This leads me to question, ‘Why do we assign meaning to things that are born from randomness?’. I believe any sequence I could’ve created I would have felt connected to it in some way, whether through relating it to my traits, experiences or personal viewpoints. Personally, patterns find me everywhere and in everything. Maybe the question isn’t ‘What does this mean about me?’, but ‘Why, when presented with something, do I want to assign meaning to it?’.
Perhaps the beauty of this art piece lies in the fact that whilst each sequence is unique, it is still made up of the exact same seven colours - the difference comes down to the arrangement. We can view people the same way. All of us are working with the same set of ingredients - emotions, experiences, relationships, memories and circumstances, yet their sequencing is never quite the same. Rainbow Permutations supports the idea that individuality is not always about holding something nobody else has, but about how we use what we’ve got differently and how we can combine our shared experiences and skills to create something collaborative.
The further down the list of hypotheticals and conceptual ‘what if’s?’ I go, the more vast and wild they become; If I’d replaced green with red, would my day have presented me with different paths and produced different results? Would I have ventured down into the underground and spent the day in South London instead of walking straight through Shoreditch down to the Thames? Might I not have seen the (subject-appropriate) rainbow pride bench or missed my bus at Waterloo Station? With 5,040 rainbow permutations, I’m presented with 5,040 variations of the same day, in which lives the me who encountered someone new and the me who didn’t, the me who took a different route and the me who ended up taking the route I find myself on on auto-pilot.
The beauty in the ‘non-beautiful’
Eatock concludes that ‘Some (sequences) are harmonious, some more jarring; all are unique and surprising.’ (1). I found myself drawn to the non-conventional rainbows - the ones that didn’t flow, placed clashing colours together or were (subjectively) unattractive. Why might disruption be more appealing than artistic harmony? Perhaps because things that don’t conform demand our attention and invite questioning. We are encouraged to pause, investigate and explore new points of view. Do they work together because they simply shouldn’t? They’re the underdog, the unexpected and surprising. They begin to veer away from the traditional rainbow symbol we know and love and become unruly, new pieces of design. Rainbow Permutations proves to me that within design beauty does not equal success. The combinations support, elevate and contradict one another. The ‘ugly’ combinations succeeded because they made me stop, they created curiosity and stole my attention. Beauty can mean success, but it definitely doesn’t define it.
From 5,040 permutations and the combination I created, a plethora of questions arose and invited a thousand more. I marvel at the 5,040 versions of myself, the 5,040 versions of my day, and the 5,040 unique, individual, walking, speaking, loving rainbows. Perhaps our specific rainbows don’t tell us who we are, but our interpretations of them do. The desire to recognise connections and assign meaning to randomness became part of the artwork itself.
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Interview by Jonathan Pierini 23/11/ 2021
Dear Daniel, thanks for taking the time to answer some of my questions and congratulation for the exhibition you brought to Milan, so rich in inspirations. My first question is somehow related to your practice and your choice to move from graphic design to the art field. In the sixties, instruction-based art set the beginning of conceptual art. At the same time instructions also played a key role within graphic design. I am thinking of design before the advent of desktop publishing – which collapsed many roles in one single person – when the designer relied on instructions to communicate the specifications required for the mass production of his designs. Your work moved from graphic design to art and to me it seems to be logical to find several instruction-based pieces within your early work. What is your relation to this practice? What does this medium or format mean for you?
Daniel Eatock: This is an interesting observation. I was studying graphic design in the early 90’s so computers and internet was very different, however, I did not experience the type of past-up instruction you allude to. I often recount a story from memory from when I was fifteen years old. I made a drawing in my sketch book, I drew two lines horizontally across the page dividing it into thirds, then wrote in the top third ‘Sky’, the middle third ‘Sea’ and the bottom third ‘Sand’. It was made out of frustration at not being able to draw as well as my best friend who was sitting next to me. It was done in jest, a fuck you to my inability to draw well. Upon reflection it was my first conceptual work, not recognised at the time, but with hindsight this manoeuvre set a precedent of how I flow around problems, using ideas to sidestep the expected.
JP: Graphic designers usually tend to overestimate their role and to see themselves as indispensable. With your template projects, such as the “template gift card” or the “template poster” you seem to challenge the relationship between the designer and the user. Do you see template as a way to empower users, as a way to get rid of the designer or the two things at the same time? What is the role of template within your work and how does it relate to your biography as a graphic designer and artist?
DE: I really struggle completing forms. I am dyslexic and find that I must take an extra ordinary amount of time and concentration to add basic data. There is something about the bureaucratic aesthetic that I find foreboding, maybe it’s because there is no room for error, or any kind of creative intervention or creativity. There is one way, and one way only. I feel like it is a straight jacket and I feel trapped. As with most things I find difficult I wanted to acknowledge, then rather than face head on and battle, I sought ways of subverting these structures. Playing with the formal aesthetic but changing content to catch the reader/viewer off guard. I wanted to disrupt the expected and reclaim the authoritative aesthetic in the same way pop culture takes military insignia and camouflage redefining it as part of a counterculture street aesthetic.
JP: Your work often relies on or is made of a single action which is reduced as much as possible. This makes me think of a sort of Existenzminimum for the production of the sign. Within your work this process of reduction goes as far as to become an act of observation. I think of your ongoing photographic project in which you capture every week something which attract your attention or also of more focused photographic projects of sort such as Considered accident. Does it relate to the idea of an economy of production?
DE: There are two things. Reduction of thought, idea, concept. Reduction of physical form, material. I like both, how much can an idea or concept be reduced, or boiled down to uncover the essence. Often pure direct ideas require very little explanation, they are so simple and obvious once understood. They feel inevitable, like a child could have thought of it. It’s the same with form and material; I like when every part of the work is essential. If anything would be removed, it would fail. There is no decoration, no superfluous parts.
The pictures you highlight are an alternative to me pointing my finger at a specific thing or moment and enabling others to see the same thing. Look at that. They freeze a moment of serendipity or enable me to collect found arrangements or subjects. They are economical as I just position the camera between myself and subject without any manipulation, always from the vantage point from which the observation was made.
JP: Reading your words it seems to me that you do not reject the idea of looking for solutions with and within your work. This surprised me a lot as in your path from graphic design to art I thought you may have developed opposed feelings against a problem-solving attitude. At the same time, you say that you “prefer to find ways around doing things properly, bypassing the struggle”. How do you mediate between these two things?
DE: Extra medium, equilibrium. My favourite point is halfway – but you often do not know when you are halfway, until the end is reached and then this midpoint can be calculated. So, it’s a conundrum. Scientific logic used in a poetic way. Half of 8 is 3 (if you cut the digit 8 down its vertical axis then it resembles a 3). This is perfectly logical and contradictory at the same moment, just like me. I feel often very sensible and silly simultaneously. My daughter said “I was the youngest grown up she knew”, what a beautiful compliment.
JP: I am very much interested in the concept of self-preferentiality as you mention it to be a key aspect in your work. Quite often within contemporary culture discourse the relevance of transdisciplinary is stressed over the idea of focus and specificity. To me this concept of self-referentiality resonates in your work as a powerful invitation to reconsider materiality and the very basic principle of interaction. I see it in your early work such ad “Bleeding art” as in the last projects “Rolling Pin Paintings” and “Rolled Squeezed Absorbed”. How does this approach relate to current dematerialisation processes and the ubiquity of technology?
DE: I think I strive for a self-referential logic when making work as a way of protecting myself from criticism. If I spell out or highlight a problem and then show an undeniable answer or solution to that problem, I feel safe. Job done. There is no room for the viewer to question. It is complete in a way that shuts off subjective preference. I think it comes from my insecurities of decision making. I might make the wrong choice; I might fail. This terrifies me! If I can see a solution then I know everything will be okay, even if it is not received well by people, it gives me an inner strength that the answer was right and I feel confident.
JP: There is an evident continuity in the way you approach the project, which can be traced both in your analogue and material works and in your relationship with the digital. Your personal website also introduces a new format, escaping the dogma of usability. You say that it is a tool through which you “both create works, and index and exhibit projects chronologically,” and in which you “propose systems, templates, invitations and opportunities for collaboration, creating social networks where contributors shape the outcome and participate in the construction of the works.” This choice clearly conveys to me an idea of design and art as an ongoing conversation. What is the focus of this conversation?
DE: It is about moving forward. Building on daily experience. Existing in and acknowledging the present moment. Being comfortable with the unknown. Letting things develop at their own pace.
JP: Thank you Daniel, for the time and the precious insights.