About Ella Barks

I have newly graduated from Brighton University with a First Class Honours in photography (BA Hons). My main medium of focus is portraiture and the materiality of a photograph. During my time at university I developed my own unique style of weaving inspired by Kensuke Koike, David Samuel Stern, Julie Cockburn and many other artists influencing me in my own practice and development as an emerging artist. This specific body of work explores the function of a photograph and the photograph as a social object. Focusing on the current pandemic which has separated loved ones, capturing and exploring the themes of longing for each other, love, separation and their connected disconnection in a multitude of diptychs, portraits and handmade woven sculptural pieces. The compositions take you on a journey resembling a story like sequence. The series began with an archival image of my great-grandmother, which my great-grandfather turned to during the war in order to hold on hope for their future and reconnection, instigating the recurrent aesthetic of the green backdrop throughout the series as a connection between the archival and digital imagery.  For this specific exhibition, which allows for a limited number of submissions, the viewer can see a selection of my woven sculptural pieces portraying the connected disconnection; with the process exploring the pixilation of modern-day technology as we try to stay connected from afar. The dimensions of the sculptural pieces submitted are all have a slight variation in size around 27.9 cm x 40 cm as they are all original handmade pieces, meaning that every one is unique and can not be exactly replicated.