Ellie Hoskins - EVERYTHING! IS! FUTILE!

About

Ellie Hoskins (b. 1995) is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer from Cumbria, now based in Liverpool. Her work is diaristic, frank and funny, combining slapstick millennial nihilism with an immersion in the rituals and details of everyday working life. OUTPUT is delighted to welcome Ellie for her first solo presentation Everything! Is! Futile! for which she is currently working in-situ in the gallery, creating an installation of text works and sculpture around a family of papier-mâché homunculi.

Hoskins’ work combines lineages of contemporary art and culture - sad, lumpy figures reminiscent of Maria Lassnig or Louise Bourgeois sup cans of lager, while inspirational Instagram quotes are replaced by seedy confessions or suburban existential angst.

The artist explains; “I think what I’m mostly inspired by is content that comes from a very human place, like proper gut-level feelings expressed successfully enough to be gut-wrenching when communicated to someone else. And so when it’s consumed you feel less alone”. Hoskins captures moments of private absurdity with self-deprecating clarity, emphasising their universality as she brings them out into the light.

This search for communality led Hoskins to create and lead the one-year unofficial online art school Phlegm, which culminated in an exhibition at The Royal Standard in 2021. Other recent projects include a text installation on the exterior of Bluecoat and Broken Little Things, a collection of short text fragments for Montez Press.

Ellie Hoskins - Everything! Is Futile! will have a launch event from 6pm - 8pm on Thursday, 21st July. The exhibition continues until August 7th.