Artist I AustraliA
Backwoods Gallery, Melbourne
October 2022
Late & Light explores concepts of memory and time, and the way that light, movement, shadows and reflections transform our perception of space. Temporary traces become moments reimagined, captured here as the visual echoes of a place, communicating the passing of time.
These works are based on intuitive sketches from my time spent on the road, out bush in Australia, throughout 2022. They capture contemplative, intimate moments of moving through a landscape at dawn or dusk. These paintings invoke the moon and the sun as channels for shared narratives – beacons that become a poetic presence in the sky.
I am intrigued by the way that darkness can alter the experience of our surroundings and shift the way our inner and outer worlds meet. As the sun sets, the fading light shapes and reshapes a tree, a movement, a sound, or a shadow down a pathway. The ensuing darkness bends our perception and imagination, testing our trust in what we see with our own eyes. All that is solid dissolves with the light and becomes something new.
These are the moments in which I slow down to notice the wax and wane and remember that everything in this world is cyclical and transient.
Nothing remains still.
Maitland Regional Art Gallery
October 2022
Half-Light offers insight into the immersive world of Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems. Hypothesized to be of significant ecological importance these deeper coral reefs are between 50-150m under the surface of the ocean. Existing in the cooler, darker waters that are yet to be affected by environmental stressors such as a changing climate.
In early 2021, artist Ellie Hannon and photographer Conor Ashleigh joined an oceanographic research expedition onboard the Schmidt Ocean Institutes research ship ‘Falkor’ to work alongside scientists. This 3 week residency took place at Ashmore Reef, a Marine park 630km north of Broome.
Half-Light provides the rare opportunity for connection and felt responsibility towards a little-known ecosystem by offering insight into spaces in nature that are unlikely to be experienced firsthand in a lifetime. These environs exist in the twilight zone, between daylight and darkness, the seen and the unseen, the known and imagined.
The Worry Tree is a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy tool that helps people to manage worrying thoughts, particularly worst-case-scenario worrying and anxiety where there is little or nothing we can do about the situation. The Worry Tree is a way of conceptualising ‘Imagined future’ scenarios where we feel powerless, distinguishing if the worry comes from a real event or hypothetical event.
Ellie Hannon’s latest collection of work “Worry Tree” explores the tension between the desire to be immersed in and at-one with nature and our alienation from the natural world. Continuing her investigation into the way our interaction with the environment shapes our personal and collective identities, in this series Hannon positions herself as a voyeur of nature - gazing in on a space that feels separate to us, but which we yearn to be part of; a world that is both the basis of all human life, but increasingly at the mercy of it.
The Worry Tree system that psychologists use to help people identify the problems over which they might exert some control and those over which they have none seems, in the current era, at once pragmatic and shocking. The existential fear that plagues so many of us is rarely diminished by the notion that we are powerless. And so, we search the earth’s surface for solace.
As we begin to see the natural world around us degrade, many of us attempt to establish a deeper personal connection with nature in order to separate ourselves, if only psychologically, from a culture that objectifies nature as solely a resource. We ‘lose ourselves’ in nature in order to escape the world in which we live, love and toil. This relationship often feels deeply personal and unique. But we always have one foot in either world, to the extent that, at times, we feel cleaved down the middle - pulled in either direction, anxiously grappling with this sharpening contradiction that lies at the heart of our relationship with nature.
But in each landscape, Hannon also finds hope. Within each waterfall, each bed of fallen leaves, she glimpses the potential for harmony between the human and natural worlds, and with it the continuation of each of the astounding, rich ecosystems that she has encountered during her extensive wanderings around the world. By helping us to meditate upon a scene with her, she presents the possibility of widening the frame from an individual connection with nature, to a social one, where the dichotomy of human/nature is broken down and the relationship becomes reciprocal, and mutually enriching. Hannon draws us in, if only for a moment, to sit beside her and gaze at these natural wonders, not as mere spectacles, but landscapes whose fate is intimately bound up with our own.
Essay: Caitlin Doyle Markwick
Shelter presents intuitive paintings and stories that depict visceral experiences out in nature.
Sheet cubbies, shanty houses, grass huts, camping tents and temples of ferns form temporary protection in an effort to create shelter. Evoking nostalgic recollections of engaging as both child and adult with the wild, a little removed from everywhere.
Contrasting forest greens and oceanic blues with rich browns and vibrant orange tones, Ellie layers gesturally painted backgrounds with more intricately patterned foregrounds. Using an intuitive approach Ellie allows the original base layer marks to be the visual transmitter, blocking and leaving behind marks that once a brushstroke now become a swaying palm leaf or, a gushing river.
Immersion within the natural world provokes a deeper engagement with the self, the vast external space allowing for the internal space to expand. Balancing on the precipice between earth and sky, between emotive and rational thought, Ellie presents the imagined and experienced interactions with the natural environment in kaleidoscopic, dreamlike fragments.
Oil on timber panel. 80cm x 60cm
Oil on timber panel. 60cm x 60cm
Oil on timber panel. 120cm x 100cm
Oil on timber panel. 20cm x 20cm
Oil on timber panel. 50cm x 40cm
Oil on timber panel. 20cm x 20cm
Oil on timber panel. 20cm x 20cm
Oil on timber panel. 20cm x 20cm
Oil on timber panel. 80cm x 60cm
Oil on timber panel. 50cm x 40cm
Oil on timber panel. 20cm x 20cm
Oil on timber panel. 20cm x 20cm
This new series of paintings presents intuitive paintings that depict familiar scenes of winter camp fires, dense jungles, waterfalls, temples of leaves, and the wonders of the night sky; evoking nostalgic recollections of experiences out in the bush, a little removed from everywhere.
Contrasting oceanic blues and greens with rich browns and vibrant orange tones, Ellie layers gesturally painted backgrounds with more intricately patterned foregrounds. Using an intuitive approach Ellie allows the original base layer marks to be the visual transmitter, blocking and leaving behind marks that once a brushstroke now become a swaying palm leaf or, a gushing river.
Immersion within the natural world provokes a deeper engagement with the self, the vast external space allowing for the internal space to expand. Balancing on the precipice between earth and sky, between emotive and rational thought, Ellie presents the imagined and experienced interactions with the natural environment in kaleidoscopic, dreamlike fragments.
Oil on timber panel, 50x40cm
Oil on timber panel, 50x40cm
oil on timber panel, 50x40cm
Oil on timber panel, 50x40cm
Oil on timber panel, 50x40cm
Oil on timber panel, 50x40cm
Oil on timber panel, 60x60cm
Oil on timber panel, 60x60cm
Oil on timber panel, 60x60cm
Oil on timber panel, 60x60cm
Oil on timber panel, 60x60cm
Oil on timber panel, 80x60cm
Oil on timber panel, 60x60cm
Oil on timber panel, 60x60cm
Oil on timber panel, 60x60cm
Oil on timber panel, 60x60cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Oil on timber panel, 18x12cm
Works created whilst staying at the Bammy residency on Mango creek of the Hawkesbury River.
These works were exhibited in a group exhibition "Imbued" at gallery 139.
Whilst in the Hawkesbury i reflected on my place within nature, the environment was wild and magic in its presence, the creek side cottage I was staying in was slowly becoming swallowed up by the surrounding landscape. I took note of the sprawl of indoor plants and pines, monstera ferns and birds of paradise introduced to the area that had slowly made there way into the natural landscape.
Plants that once decorated the interior of the house were now wildly wrapping themselves around eucalyptus trees, and in turn, the mosses that once grew on the trees and rocks were slowly climbing there way up the walls of the cottage and entering the home.
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 120×90. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 120×90. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 180×120. 2017
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 40×30. 2016
Forsight Gallery. July 2016. Newcastle NSW
A Vibrant Gathering, celebrates the Australian wildflower season, and further explores Ellie’s place within nature through memories of gathering and collecting.
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 120x80. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 120x80. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Acrylic on Board. 60×60. 2016
Traces, explores the beauty of things left behind.
In this series of new works Ellie traverses the fields of painting, drawing, ceramics and assemblage, seeking a poetic relationship between combinations of elements and materials. It is a journey in which she explores the idea of a trace being a surviving mark, a memory or evidence of the existence or passing of something.
As a painter, her mark making leads the viewer, via the suggestion of a footprint or the dashed line of an intermittent path, into a rich litter of colourful leaves and fallen flowers.
As a sculptor she wanders the lost and found, picking over discarded junk materials and assembling them with her freshly handcrafted ceramics. In Traces, antique silver and brass dining ware has been curiously remodeled to take on a new botanical form.
Acrylic on Board. 40cm diameter. 2015
Acrylic on Board. 40cm diameter. 2015
Acrylic on Board. 40cm diameter. 2015
Acrylic on Board. 40cm diameter. 2015
Acrylic on Board. 40cm diameter. 2015
Acrylic on Board. 40cm diameter. 2015
Acrylic on Board. 40cm diameter. 2015
Acrylic on Board. 40cm diameter. 2015
Acrylic on Board. 40cm diameter. 2015
Acrylic on Board. 140×120 . 2015
Acrylic on Board. 140×120 . 2015