Bio

Ella Sutherland operates in diverse fields of visual arts and publishing, and engages with the poetic potential of letterforms, architectural theory and what can be loosely described as social spaces where exchanges of philosophical and art concepts and queer histories intersect. In 2020 she was the recipient of the Creative New Zealand Visual Arts Residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, which she was able to take up in 2023.

Sutherland graduated with an MFA (Distinction) from the University of Canterbury in 2012. She is currently based in Sydney and has, in recent years, exhibited in Australia, Germany, Aotearoa New Zealand and in 2018 at the Gwanju Biennale, China.

Her paintings frequently reference book design, and this point of departure allows for a sense of anticipation of the potential content within. It also implies the passage of time, much like that of reading. In this regard, a work such as Some Transgression (2020) in Te Haerenga Collection, with its motif of folding or flipping pages with interspersed inclusions, alludes to the acquisition of knowledge en route to a broader reading of the act of painting, which invariably appears as a holistic, completed whole.

The question, then, invariably becomes, what is the correct or intended reading and where does the viewer sit in relation to the intent of the artist and the implied text that informs a given work?

This proposes a hierarchy of access to information and the status of repositories such as libraries and the vortex of the internet. A recent review of her 2024 exhibition Still Life with Argot describes her work as containing ‘ambiguous motifs that are slippery in interpretation … and a title like “back issue” can mean a magazine, political debate or the rear surface of a woman’s torso … the Argot of the show’s title, refers to a secret language embraced by minority communities to protect themselves.’ The writer John Hurrell goes on to describe her paintings as ‘deliberately oblique in intention’. The onus then goes onto the viewer to choose a purely aesthetic reaction or to turn the page or hit search to access further information as a decoding strategy. There is substantial payoff in either choice.

Exhibitions

• 2024   Sumer, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: Still Life with Argot
• 2024   UTS Gallery, Sydney: Image, Interrupted
• 2023   Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin: Argot
• 2022   FUTURES, Melbourne, Australia: Speaker of the House
• 2021   Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū: Things That Shape Us
• 2020   Te Tuhi, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: Keys to the Book of the City of Ladies