Patricia Ellis

For her solo exhibition, Patricia Ellis presented a smattering of her stylistically buoyant paintings. Ellis’s work focuses on her favourite themes of Canadian life and all its tacky glory. The paintings depicted various aspects of life in rural isolation; hockey players, hunting buddies, summer fairs, pensioners’ homes and children’s Halloween parties, communities born of absurd circumstance, collective endeavor and an irrepressible optimism. Both nostalgic and melancholy, Ellis’s deceptively naive handling of paint re-enforces the down home world of cookie bake outs and extreme violence on the ice rink. Yet underneath the gloopy blobs of paint and clashing colour schemes there seems to be a profound emptiness in her subject: a longing for wholesome value, unconditional acceptance, best-effort aspiration.

Recent exhibitions include:

Confusion Project, Project 133, London, 2006

Metropolis Rise: New Art From London, CQL Design Centre, Shanghai & 798 Space, Beijing, 2006

Sky-ving, Temporary Contemporary, London, 2005

Old Money, Intermedia, Glasgow, 2005

My House Projects Stand Assembly Studios

3rd November 2006 12 noon till 9pm Private view 6pm – 9pm