Ellie Young and Sian Hughes, Talk

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Ellie Young and Sian Hughes - Artist Talk 

In the gallery and on Facebook live, Free 7-9pm

Writer Sian Hughes will join artist Ellie Young and Made curator Zoe Gingell to discuss how works featured in Young’s’ I Want to Believe’ exhibition influenced her new writings.

“As soon as I met Ellie, I saw we were both preoccupied with certain themes,” said Hughes. “We are both fascinated with belief, whether it’s belief in religion, or belief in the flesh and blood existence of a movie character. Belief is an artistic springboard that enables us to question what we believe, why we believe, and why we often suspend our disbelief. “

In Ellie’s recent work, the question of belief extends to interrogating the physical environment, the constraints of the painting surface, literally inviting us to question our belief in the physical world, to ask: ‘What is real? What is not?’ Themes of metamorphosis and disembodiment similarly question received beliefs about the human body and mind.

“The themes of the work settle around belief - I’ve always found it easy to suspend my disbelief when confronted with fictional worlds films, books and television I become immediately absorbed in. Belief as a religious faith, belief in the afterlife ghosts and psychic mediums, in the truth being out there, belief in art, these things are all entwined in my mind in spite of an overriding scepticism.” - Ellie Young, 2022

In Hughes’s writings, characters also undergo transformation. A woman in a float tank turns into a mermaid. A dead mink stole wrapped around a widow’s neck in chapel returns to life. Transformation and disassociation invite readers to question beliefs about the limits of human experience. Characters strive for fulfilment or connection, desperate to believe.

“Working with Ellie unlocked stories lurking in my sub-conscious,” said Hughes. “When Ellie told me her story about the Turin shroud, I was thrilled. As a child, I was obsessed with the shroud - the idea that Jesus leaked his ‘magical’ essence on to fabric. I thought everything in my life would change, if only I touched the shroud!’

For Zoë Gingell, artist and curator, “Images linger in the mind beyond their first appearance for reasons we might not realise at the time, we perhaps draw on them as markers to build into our own life narratives. Young’s work is built from the moving image, a moment captured and reactivated in the space to perhaps become more ‘real’ in the viewers’ eye, whilst showing the very trickery to reanimate that image and find our own ‘truthful’ version through connecting the story made from the pieces she presents like clues.’’