Ella Walker

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Pilar Corrias is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by artist Ella Walker at its Savile Row gallery.

For her first exhibition with the gallery, Walker intricately weaves imagery from broad swathes of history and popular culture – medieval manuscripts to modern ballet, the cinema of Fellini and Pasolini to fetishwear magazines – to produce emotive, stage-like scenes. Interrogating traditional depictions of women throughout art history, Walker’s paintings offer a counterpoint to the traditional casting of female subjects as exemplars of vice and virtue. Freed from this moral framework, her figures are recalibrated, reentering the world of images as complex, contradictory, unruly beings.

Ella Walker

The Pleasures Dance

2024

Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on canvas

220 x 190 cm
86 5/8 x 74 3/4 in

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Ella Walker

The Garden

2024

Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on canvas

220 x 190 cm
86 5/8 x 74 3/4 in

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Characters who have been overlooked or undermined traditionally now take centre stage: the stock commedia dell’arte character of the servetta, the jealous crone, the madwoman, the glee-maiden and sorceress; in short, uncontainable, insolent women whose example we are not meant to follow. Cheeky, mask-like faces jeer out from the canvas; a fist pummels the floor in a state of protest. In The Bridled Sweeties (2024), a Maria Callas lookalike rolls her eyes back into her head, in what could be an expression of delirium, orgasm, or simply boredom. 

Ella Walker

Proscenium Arch

2024

Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on linen

170 x 90 cm
66 7/8 x 35 3/8 in

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Ella Walker

Medea

2024

Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on canvas

170 x 90 cm
66 7/8 x 35 3/8 in

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‘The women in Ella Walker’s paintings are both ancient and modern, strange and familiar. While one woman's bouffant is 1960s chic, others wear wimples.’ – Skye Sherwin

The exhibition takes as its point of departure the thirteenthcentury French poem, The Romance of the Rose, in which a lover hunts for an object to love. The allegorical tale of courtly love is replete with patriarchal language – the repeated references to ‘plucking’ the perfect ‘rosebud’ underscore the imperativeness of feminine chastity and the process of deflowering as a chivalrous project. As he attempts to navigate love’s true course, the narrator encounters a series of generic female characters representing various vices, including Idleness, Avarice, Hatred and Envy, all of whom serve as cautionary obstacles. In Walker’s compositions, however, this chorus of archetypes are relieved of their duties. Each figure becomes self-sufficient, with their own interior life.

Ella Walker

The Bridled Sweeties

2024

Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on linen

262 x 165 cm
103 1/8 x 65 in

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Walker’s transhistorical approach is mirrored in her use of materials and techniques, where light washes of acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and marble dust commingle upon a textured ground. Employing the spatial logics of fresco and its shallow depth of field, the refined line work and luminosity of the artist’s paintings recall Piero della Francesca, while the architectural planes and costume design evoke Giorgio de Chirico. Unifying historic and contemporary narratives and materials within a single picture plane, Walker reinjects a joyful spirit of punk feminism back into the past, a freedom that allows the messy woman all the levity, comedy and complexity she merits.

Ella Walker

Caryatid

2024

Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on linen

170 x 90 cm
66 7/8 x 35 3/8 in

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Ella Walker

Girl Sitting on a Chair

2024

Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on linen

170 x 90 cm
66 7/8 x 35 3/8 in

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‘Whether posed in groups or alone, one thing her women clearly do have in common is that they occupy their own space: a theatrical, splintered and levelled world where figures, props and scenery from across time might float side by side.’ – Skye Sherwin

Ella Walker

The Lover, Asleep

2024

Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on linen

Unframed:
180 x 100.7 cm
70 7/8 x 39 5/8 in
Framed:
183 x 103.5 x 5.5 cm
72 x 40 3/4 x 2 1/8 in

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Ella Walker

The Loyal Bride

2024

Acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk and pencil on linen

170 x 90 cm
66 7/8 x 35 3/8 in

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Installation Views

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News and press

ArtReview

Ella Walker Plucks the Bud

Tom Moreton reviews Ella Walker's solo exhibition The Romance of the Rose at Pilar Corrias.

7.10.2024 External link

Frieze

Ella Walker Boldly Redefines Female Archetypes

Melissa Baksh reviews Ella Walker's solo exhibition at Pilar Corrias Savile Row for Frieze.

30.9.2024 External link

Wallpaper*

‘There is beauty there but it’s also a bit subverted’: Ella Walker at Pilar Corrias

Emily Steer reviews Ella Walker's first solo exhibition at Pilar Corrias.

20.9.2024 External link

Publications

2024

Ella Walker: The Romance of the Rose

Pilar Corrias is pleased to present a booklet with new writing by Skye Sherwin and an interview between Ella Walker and Craig Burnett.

The London Magazine

Ella Walker is interviewed by The London Magazine

Ella Walker speaks to Katie Tobin on the occasion of her solo exhibition at Pilar Corrias.

10.9.2024 External link

See also

Artists

Ella Walker

Ella Walker (b. 1993, Manchester, United Kingdom) is a British artist who is based in London. Using both traditional and contemporary painting techniques and materials, the artist works from a...

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