Ella Porter, Jade beaded sculptural vessel with light gap

Ella Porter’s sculptural pieces have a unique textural language. Informed by her original study of painting and printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art, Ella understands the surface of her ceramics as a way to explore interactions of colour, mark and tone. You can see the hand of the printmaker and painter in her work, with an emphasis on both the imprint and the luxuriation of painterly surface. Ella’s vessels explore the relationship between the 2D and 3D, treating each piece like an expanded, 3-dimensional canvas. Each piece begins as a large hand-rolled slab on which Ella introduces colour through different oxides, slips and textural imprints, treating it like a piece of fabric which is then cut and formed together.  

She is interested in an object's relationship to space and light, understanding her pieces as functional, moveable objects as well as decorative ones. The torn edges and gaps which let chinks of light into the object’s interior, means that the object has a continuing and changing rapport with its surroundings. 

Ella works in series, each piece building on the discoveries she makes creating what came before. This exhibition includes work from many different series’ but the ‘Jade Beaded Vessels’ are her most recent. The textural detail on these pieces are created by Ella hand-weaving together beads into a small rectangle which is cast in clay and stamped into the surface of her pieces. The intersection between jewellery and ceramics in Porter's work has sprung from her realisation that anywhere there is indigenous culture, ceramics and jewellery are always the earliest artforms. She says: “there is a human need to decorate both yourself and your space. My work responds to and continues this innate human desire.” Ella understands ceramics as objects that persist. Shards of past objects of display or utility are being discovered all the time, whether in archeological sites or in our back gardens. The torn edges visible in many of her pieces is a nod to ceramics’ relationship to fragmentation – as if they have been built from the shards of works that have come before. 

Ella completed her Foundation Diploma at Camberwell College of Art, followed by a BA in Painting and Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art. Following her BA and the GSA fire of 2014, she was awarded a Phoenix Bursary and received the NL Culture prize, for which she produced a solo exhibition.  Ella went on to set up a studio in London and began working with clay which led to her Diploma in Ceramics at the CityLit, 2017.  In 2021 she completed her MA at The Royal College of Art, which was supported by The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust.  Ella’s work has been exhibited with independent galleries as well as the Ingram Prize, for which she was a 2021 finalist as well as other public and private collections. 

Ella’s pieces are part of our exhibition TERROIR & TEXTURE taking place at Artelium Wine Estate from the 1st-17th November.