Artist Bio

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Ella grew up in Dorset, where she is currently based after her Fine Art Degree at Falmouth University. She received the Wilhelmina Barns Graham Award in 2018 and embarked on a month travelling through Italy, visiting Florence, Rome and Sarteano in Tuscany. Following this trip she completed a two month internship in Iceland working for Artist Ragnar Kjartansson, a contemporary, multidisciplinary performance artist. Returning to Cornwall Ella took up a residency at Porthmeor studios, where she used the writing, photographs and sketches from her travels to inspire a new body of work and performance.

 

Ella went on to be selected for the FBA Futures annual exhibition at Mall Galleries in London. FBA Futures is the UK’s biggest annual survey of emerging contemporary figurative art, selected by the Federation of British Artists. It maps new practices and ideas of representation and draughtsmanship across painting, drawing, sculpture and printmaking by the outstanding art graduates of 2018.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artist Statement

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Ella works across disciplines, between Drawing, painting, writing, performance and film. Her work arrives from an interest in the oscillation between the dualities of sexuality, gender and mixed ethnic identity and the associated sense of marginality. One of her concerns is how place contributes to the sense of belonging and not belonging. Stimulated by the semiotics of language and imagery, Ella works from photographs, associations, memory and writing as well as from life, desiring to document not only what is seen in a moment but also what is felt, recalled and understood.  Play and experimentation are at the heart of her process, investigating how imagery evolves through painting falling in between indiscernible and representational figuration.

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Email: ella.squirrell@gmail.com

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Website:www.ellasquirrell.com

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