Ella Morton
Canada
Biography
Ella Morton is a Canadian visual artist and filmmaker based in Toronto. Her work focuses on experimental analogue processes to capture remote landscapes' fragile and sublime qualities. She has worked on projects across Canada, Scandinavia, Greenland, Antarctica, and Latin America. Ella holds a BFA from Parsons School of Design and an MFA from York University. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Lonsdale Gallery, Foley Gallery, Contemporary Calgary, and the Center for Fine Art Photography. Her films have been featured at international film festivals such as the Vancouver International Film Festival and Rotterdam International Film Festival. Morton’s work has been published in several notable outlets, and her practice has received support from various Canadian arts councils.
Project
The Residue of Starlight
The Residue of Starlight (2024-Ongoing) examines the desert landscapes of Northern Chile, New Mexico and the Australian Outback. All three locations face similar risks of increasing temperatures, droughts and wildfires as the climate crisis intensifies. All are also home to cultures that have a distinctly strong connection to the sky, stars and universe beyond Earth. Captured on a large-format camera, these photographs feature mordançage, film soup and the use of decades-old expired films. Combining these processes on the colour film plane produces otherworldly, yet tactile visuals- a collision of the tangible and intangible. Conjuring psychedelic dreamscapes, the work examines the deep rapport with the numinous that is palpable in the desert.
Statement
Procession of Ghosts (2022-Ongoing) is a series of unique wet-plate collodion ambrotypes on black glass captured in polar landscapes. The glass is broken and repaired with gold pigment in the cracks. This process references the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken ceramics are repaired with gold and considered more beautiful than their original state. The process of breaking and repairing here speaks to the fragile state of polar landscapes today, and perhaps offers hope and optimism. As the icy landscapes convey the transcendence of nature, the cracks speak to this pivotal moment where we are collectively deciding its future.
