I remember the blur, the shot taken while moving, the moment in a kaleidoscope of moments flittering and flicking through the view finder. I remember the shape of what we might have done and who we might have been.
It is like a loaf of bread proofing out of sight. It is like a pour of ink crawling outwards on fabric, growing in the lapses between blinks. It is like leavings falling from trees in the dark of night. It is like seasons passing in mornings I slept through. It is changing and I cannot stop it.
Can I remember you? Can I remember your laughter? Your joy? Your sadness cut across the table in the library? Can I remember everything that you taught me?
Can I hold you as a fixed thing before everything becomes forever changed? Can I hold you?
In her first series of paintings, completed in acrylic on paper and canvas, Ella pays homage to the places and the people that were her becoming— friends met by chance and made with effort in the city that bore her and taught her so much. Taken from film and digital photographs during her college years, the pieces centre on moments fragmented and separated from their whole.
In ‘Praying and Trying in Balham,’ a friend holds hands close to her face while watching Ireland getting beaten in the rugby during St. Patricks Day weekend. Taken from a photo shot during a trip to London to visit an old school friend, the piece centres on a moment of passion, despair, hope and togetherness. Separated from its context, the moment serves to encapsulate all of the moments of young adulthood that are characterised by the feeling that belief might not be enough to win.
In ‘Glass Full of Empty,’ a magazine launch at the end of the final semester of final year becomes the knowledge that your heart is full of things which are ending. The wine glasses are emptied of their wine. The mahogany table serves to create the illusion that there might be more sustenance to consume, but there isn’t— not in the way there was before. The cups become a source of light in their emptiness. This is the knowledge of how good it all was; that the emptiness should glow.
In ‘Kindling,’ two friends begin to love each other as a fire takes hold in the night. A moment captured in the midst of everything ending, the piece serves to demonstrate the hope that things do not simply just die, but become again. A hand glows in the light of the flames, exposing the intent and purpose in deciding to connect with someone. An empty cup sits horizontal on the ground underfoot— enveloped in shadow it is a call back to ‘Glass Full of Empty.’ It reaffirms that there are new forms of sustenance. It is a bringing forward of the light from the structured place that housed it, to the hand that exercises agency in the belief that the world has more in store.
In ‘Two for Life,’ a hand offers up two green grapes to the face behind the camera. A piece painted from an image taken many years ago on a trip to Berlin at the start of a relationship, it is an homage to the kindness of offering another sustenance. The hand is the sustenance just as much as the grapes are. The rings glint in the light, the ground beneath is nothing more than a tile of colour — the detail, the vividness of the moment and the memory is in the connection between two young people learning how to live and to love.
Each of the pieces serve as a reminder and a meditation on what it is to begin to create a narrative through the few shots that are still, fixed and unmoving. To begin to piece together a vow of belief in what can be set out clearly— in the shapes of bodies appearing still for a moment, in the shapes of lessons learnt only by looking very intently.
Together the works form a cohesive prayer of gratitude, gratitude for the moments of despair that don’t seem so bad when they are held together, gratitude for the teachings of other people, for the kindness of friends and the comfort of having a community that loves, believes, and cares.