Ella Squirrel, a 2018 graduate of Falmouth University, is a prolific and curious painter with a quiet confidence. Her already impressive portfolio describes an artist with an intimate, human interest in the lived experience.
Squirrel started her presentation with an explanation of her interests, expressing an ongoing enquiry of social performance, and environmental conformity, a process that led onto her degree show work. Her soft, dreamy painting style describes gender performativity, awkwardness, and performance in both literal and figurative senses. The work is introspective with a tender gaze, playing with the relationship between power and vulnerability.
Squirrel showed her work throughout the past years as an outlet to her experience of life, through her time spent in Italy in 2018 as the recipient of the William Barnes award, working with the public and the private inspired by the visual language of baroque and street theatre.
Accompanied by photography, Squirrel evidences her curiosity of the public and the private, and how we the costumes we don display our relationship to our image and ourselves. Her work with the Arrischianti theatre academy in Tuscany served as a form of research, instigating an interest in the relationship between language and the visual.
Squirrel was also awarded an internship with Ragnar Kjartansson in Reykjavik, in which she made painterly film sets of landscapes to accompany Kjartansson's film making project. This experience encouraged Squirrel to think beyond the two dimensional canvas, and instigated an exhibition with other residents in which her paintings took a new form, inspired by the film set she had had a hand in making.
Upon returning to England, she took up residency in studio number nine in Porthmear Studios, a tranquil stay which led to her participation in Nina Royle's performance piece "Glorgas", an exploration of the problematic assumptions made about colour.
This experience instilled a new confidence in Squirrel, which enabled her to explore performance in a way that was previously absent from her practice. With this fresh perspective on art making, Squirrel collaborated with film maker Boris Hallvig to make "Eyes wide shut", a film further exploring awkwardness and the way the body interacts with interior architecture. The film is shaped by the performance of Squirrel's beautiful original song.
During a break from the art world, Squirrel found a new relationship to water, adopting swimming into her daily practice, which eventually found its way into her paintings.
From this a new series was born, and paintings exploring a return to her roots and a sense of belonging featured in her exhibition at the Literary Scientific Institute in her hometown of Bridport.
Squirrel also featured in the Enys House exhibition "Island", reconnecting with Cornwall and other graduates.
With an open and gentle presence, Squirrel ended what was a colourful and impressive talk with calming thoughts about power and vulnerability, stating that "every attempt is a success in its own way".
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