Exhibits,

Ella Dunn Girl from The North Country

Opening: Wednesday 11 April 6 - 8pm Dates: 11 April - 5 May 2018

Girl from The North Country.

My head rests on the window, the hum and vibration of the motor inviting me in and out of a soft sleep. In beautiful flat fields of silver, plump rounded granite boulders sit like sentinels guarding the deserted paddocks.

On we go to the North.

Snippets of scenes flicker by, with the lines of the real and imagined becoming blurred; golden summer light filling up the car, an old man bending over with a cross at the roads edge, a boy sipping on a strawberry milk as he rides around the ghost town, a hairdressers that is all set up, with water in the spray bottles, chairs, magazines in place but the plants are dead and a thick layer of dust on the floor. Stories of people and places rest on my mind. The story is as much about the mundane moments as often this is often where absurdity lays.

I am from The North Country, where green is the dominant hue, alongside the languid humid days, sweet breathy mornings, noisy insect filled nights.
I travel back to The North occasionally; to warm my bones, swim in the warm sea and sometimes to paint.

I look forward to long road trips. I find clarity and a distilling happens from hours spent listening to music broken up new vistas and encounters. The rhythmic drone of the car sparks a ‘going over’ of the state of my personal world, time to dream, plan and gives me space to have a closer reflection rather than a reactive conditioned response.

It took me a while to realize that ‘out there’ follows you. It isn’t one ideal place (for I am of The South too now) but a collection of experiences and learning, always learning that form sediments deep under the skin and into your bones.
My work is reflections of those moments, light, and movement, I aim to try and imbued a sense of being there not some oblique voyeur view but more ‘come over here’.

Ella Dunn’s practice is focused on the exploration of the world of the ‘everyday’, paying homage to the ‘everyday’ man. Bringing to light the sometimes humorous, peculiar or absurd moments that can take place in mundane, familiar experiences. Dunn investigates connections of time, place and characters within her personal world.

Ella Dunn spent her formative years growing up n the mid-north coast of NSW and is currently living and working in Melbourne. Dunn completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts with an Honours year in 2017 and has been exhibiting since 2014. Dunn has exhibited in Sutton Project Space, Melbourne City library, Monsalvate Gallery, Forty Five Downstairs, Melbourne University House and most recently shown works in ‘The Dirty Dozen’ space in Flinders street’s ‘ Campbell Arcade’. Dunn has been awarded the John Vickery Drawing Scholarship in 2015 and the National Gallery of Victoria Women’s Association Award, VCA Graduate show 2016.

Photography by Christo Crocker.

Catalogue
“Girl from the North Country”
Text by Brigid Hansen
2018