ELLIE HANNON
Ellie Hannon (b. Sydney 1988) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Newcastle NSW that works across exhibitions, public art and community engagement projects. These process-led actions fuel Hannon’s visual account presenting personal and political issues in relation to nature. She explores the natural environment as both a subject and a point of departure that begins an investigation into how interactions and impacts on these spaces shape individual and collective identity.
Working primarily as a painter, Hannon creates visceral, immersive stills of the natural world. Characterised by her bold and unexpectedly harmonic colour scape’s Hannon’s paintings employ gestural mark making with playful textures and perspectives formed through patch-worked backgrounds, gravitational mid-grounds and intricate foregrounds.
Since completing her Bachelor of Fine Art at Newcastle University in 2009 Hannon has exhibited with Backwoods Gallery biannually in Melbourne including; Late & Light (2022) Worry tree (2020) The Wild (2018), and other solo exhibitions include Half-Light, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, (2022), Shelter, Marfa Gallery, Melbourne, (2019) Traces, Newcastle Art Space, Newcastle (2015) On my way, Corner Store Gallery, Orange, (2014). Significant group exhibitions include, Between Painters, Backwoods Gallery, Melbourne (2022), Collect, The Lockup, Newcastle, (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018), A Transient Love, Maitland Regional art Gallery, Maitland (2017). Hannon was a finalist in the Little things art prize, Saint Cloche Gallery, Sydney (2021, 2020), and was selected as a Finalist in the biannual Alice Springs art prize at the Araluen Art Centre in 2022.
Hannon has worked across a diverse array of community based art projects throughout her art career, having developed a unique methodology in engaging community, Hannon employs a respectful and strengths-based approach formed around the core values of platforming artists and accessibility to creativity. Hannon lived in Indonesia for 3 years where she co-managed the funding, construction and programming of a community art centre in the remote village of Jatitujuh, West Java. This project received the Australian Arts in Asia Government award for philanthropy and community engagement in 2013. More recent projects include, 2020 NSW Government “My Community Grant” where Hannon facilitated workshops for a mural and community courtyard revitalisation in Newcastle, and over the past 5 years has collaborated with Marrawuddi Arts Centre, Numbulwar art centre and GARMA festival liaising with community members and stakeholders to design and install large scale murals with local Indigenous artists.
“‘Each Side of the River’ presents calming habitats around rivers, exploring concepts of memory and time, and the way that light, movement, shadows and reflections transform our perception of place. Temporary traces become moments reimagined, captured in these works as the visual echoes of a place. I’m intrigued with how our inner and outer worlds meet when out in the bush, often finding a space for internal reflection and observation. Where joy comes in the form of wildflowers bursting into bloom, personal reflection when the water acts as a mirror for the sky, and connecting with patience through observing the paperbarks as they wait for the tide to come in and out, and the sun and the moon to rise and set. ”