Ella Garvey
Degree: Fine Art
University: Central Saint Martins
Graduation Year: 2022
New Blood Art Commentary
The painter as archeologist: Ella Garvey collects imagery “spanning civilizations and styles, from ancient vessels to art nouveau design objects”. The result is an aesthetic of an eclectic sensibility – think Salvador Dalí or David Lynch. Or the poetry of Icelandic pop artist, Björk, whose songs create a space both hushed and thrilled – as you might describe a ritual, the sense of which inflects Ella’s paintings too. She’ll often compose them as frames within frames, alongside the recurrence of eyes this draws attention to the act of looking. Other symbols drift through her oeuvre: a sphinx, shells. They do so in painted space that has the removed reality of myth.
When we talk about the magic of art, we don’t always mean it literally. But magic is foregrounded in these paintings, through the occult, strange and votive. ‘The Untethered Vessel’ may remind of Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ when he writes, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter". The uncanny imbues these works, as in, what slips free of rationalisation into the wider realm of the sensual imagination. The esoteric is a source of renewed connection – including with the untold reveries of the past. What survives of us is a playful impulse, toward an elusive world
Artist Statement
Ella Garvey (originally from the Isle of Man) is a painter based in London, recently graduated from Central Saint Martins. Her practice centres around the mythologizing of space and objects, using paint as a tool to play with form. Through collecting imagery spanning civilisations and styles, from ancient vessels to art nouveau design objects, she creates a visual language of recognisable symbols and forms that relate yet contradict. Stumbling upon one object and its stories leads her down the path of many more, all to be explored upon the surface of the canvas. It is a way of rearranging to pose new questions, to create poetry from the ordinary. She enjoys her work to be undefined, alluding to surrealism, symbolism and narrative, representing whilst also hiding. She emphasises a beauty that can’t be spoken, an eerie stillness inhabiting each world she imagines.