Ellen Stewart
Ellen Stewart is a London based artist, working predominantly in photography. Her practice focuses around the every day in the aim to deliberately confuse and question our own associations to our public and private space. Using constraints such as her childhood home, Stewart plays with ‘making strange’ the seemingly mundane in order to explore the tension between how we look at the everyday and the ‘epic’. Although the ideas of subverting the familiar are not new her approach uses compositions and humor in order to explore new questions of our relationship with the recognizable. She admires the work of artists like Gerhard Richter and Gillian Wearing in their different approach to documenting everyday life whilst her current research in the everyday is surrounding ideas of repetition and time.
Instagram: @ellenjstewart
Where would you like your work to take you?
I'd love my work to develop over the next few years to take me to a place where I can really identify my own voice more. I also love that I have no idea where my work will take me.
Which part of your creative process do you enjoy most?
The process of coming up with ideas and having that 'eureka' moment when you've connected all these threads of separate/contradicting thoughts is definitely a favourite part of the process for me. I also love shooting and finding these outside elements of chance, that you could never of planned, coming into play and developing your idea. Whilst there is also a distinctive, exhilarating buzz about getting negatives back and seeing how this all worked out .. or didn't.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
This definitely changes project to project it mainly comes from a mixture of looking at people and objects in everyday life, triggering some kind of thought that propels research in anything from newspaper articles to ebay items. More recently for example, I've been rummaging around the welcome collection archive of advertisements.
What piece of music would you say compliments your work the most?
I'd say at the moment I love the playfulness and slight strangeness of Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard by Paul Simon.
Can you list a couple other creatives/friends/people you look to for inspiration?
My two wonderful friends Adam and Naoise I definitely look up to as inspiration. Adam is a hilarious filmmaker and producer who's 'weirder the better' approach, makes you question the most banal aspects of life. Whilst Naoise has the most amazing creative brain and is the editor-in-chief of the clever and witty Hot Potato magazine.
