Journey To The Centre Of The Couch (Couches & Other Good Ideas), Ella Dorton

About

Typically using found fabrics, old clothes, bedsheets, curtains and paint, the artist composes portraits that reflect the people of Hull. Her interests have recently explored fictional future landscapes that capture drastic ecological change with rising sea levels and continued use of plastics and their detriment on the environment.

For her project at Humber Street Gallery, the artist will develop a series of large-scale fabric collages that depict individuals and groups of people that make up the social diaspora of Hull from communities surrounding her own neighbourhood. To create these, the artist has composed portraits and sketches brought together through extensive sittings with her subjects. These sittings act as an axis to bring the voices of those who greatly inspire her, directly into the work, often including quotes from conversations scrawled/stitched onto the final piece.

Ella Dorton is one of seven artists who collectively run Ground, an artist run workshop, gallery and community space in Hull. Many of the subjects within in this series of work have been a part of the Ground community.