Bio

Ashleigh Ellis is a multidisciplinary artist based in Cork. She graduated from the Crawford College of Art and Design 2011, and the Open University 2017 where she undertook research about young artist’s identity and self-esteem. She taught art and was a curriculum coordinator in Brockwood Park School U.K. co-creating multidisciplinary curricula, including Human Ecology. 

 

Ashleigh’s practice has an eco-social concern and she develops many different media, processes and disciplines to draw out the relationships between people and the living world. Her work is interested in Placemaking, social values, histories and stories, and her work often engages the public with nature in creative events to connect with our environment and re-imagine our world. 

 

Recent awards include the AIC Scheme funded by Create Collaborative Arts, Arts Council Ireland, and the Arts in Context award funded by Cork City Council. Her work is held in public collections at MTU and the Cork School of Music, and by many private collectors. She is employed by Helium Arts empowering children living with conditions through creative practices and is a committed volunteer with Green Spaces for Health.

 

Statement

I am a multidisciplinary Irish artist who's practice has recently been focused on the cross-overs between ecology, community and textile art. Uncovering and developing processes excites me, the materials and their qualities which we use and how we relate to them, and how creation can bring people together through shared and diverse interests and know-how. Creating is an active and vital relationship with what is; with each other, our environment, and what is going on inside of us. It is necessarily on the edge of the known but also a realization of communion. For me, whether drawing, weaving, experimenting with natural dyes, or simply observing, this active relationship with something true can be meditative, and feels more necessary than ever. I hope in my journey as an artist to discover this again and again, within myself and with others, always new, always learning.