DEEPER WATER
ELLA DUNN
DEEPER WATER
19 – 30 January 2022
Opening night: Wednesday 19th January, 6 – 8pm
Meet the artist: Saturday 22nd January, 11am – 2pm
Catalogue & Price List: View PDF Catalogue (3Mb)
Saint Cloche takes great pleasure in revealing emerging Australian artist Ella Dunn with her show ‘Deeper Water.’
Ella’s paintings are often storyline based, symbolic and allegorical. The brush has replaced the camera as her channeling tool and this body of work has been inspired by the themes in Paul Kelly’s song ‘Deeper Water’ and explores ideas around the fragility of life and the rhythms of its never-ending, forever evolving stages of existence and her own developing acute awareness of the march of time.
“I began looking into bodies of water and how they are often destination sites for contemplation and reflection. A place of constant shaping and reshaping, tides coming in and out. Being in my late twenties, I feel time moving forward, shifting, and changing like these tides.
I find myself drawn to bodies of water, the sea, rivers, and creeks. Each encounter may bring something new, a different way to reflect on times past, what’s to come in the future, people that have come and gone, the passing of loved ones, and remembering moments felt, experienced and shared.
Growing up, I was surrounded by expanses of blue. A calm and gentle ocean that provided me with a place to reflect. Each summer I leave from the inner city and head north to my hometown by the beach. Last summer when I returned to the city, my mind was full of lingering thoughts of the sea.
I found myself subconsciously sketching and painting scenes of the ocean, recent experiences that were fresh in my mind. I found myself taking these memories, twisting, and morphing them through the medium of paint.
Through the use of gestural brush strokes and abstraction, these bodies of water became narratives embedded with my personal experiences. The textural and ambiguous nature of my work scatters meaning, encouraging the viewer to create their own story and reflect on their own lives.
~ Ella Dunn
About Ella Dunn
Ella Dunn is a Melbourne based artist who focuses on narrative based, figurative works. She uses paint to delve into domestic spaces, her immediate surrounds and personal experiences. Ella continues to explore the sometimes humorous, peculiar or absurd moments that can take place in mundane, familiar settings. Ella completed a Bachelor of Fine Art with honours at the Victorian College of the Arts (2017) and has been exhibiting since 2014. She has exhibited in Sutton Project Space, Forty Five Downstairs, Bus Projects and c3 Contemporary Art Space among many others.
