Ellie Hannon

Ellie Hannon is an interdisciplinary artist that works across exhibitions, public art and community engagement projects. These process-led actions fuel Hannon’s visual account, presenting personal and political issues in relation to nature. She explores the natural environment as both a subject and a point of departure that begins an investigation into how interactions and impacts on these spaces shape individual and collective identity.  

Painting and drawing exist at the core of Hannon’s practice, where other mediums are explored as an extension. Characterised by her bold and unexpectedly harmonic colour scape’s Hannon’s paintings employ gestural mark making with playful textures and perspectives formed through patch-worked backgrounds, gravitational mid-grounds and intricate foregrounds.  

Since completing her Bachelor of Fine Art at Newcastle University in 2009, Hannon has exhibited with Backwoods Gallery biannually in Melbourne including; Late & Light (2022) Worry tree (2020) The Wild (2018), other solo exhibitions include Half-Light, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, (2022), Shelter, Marfa Gallery, Melbourne, (2019) Traces, Newcastle Art Space, Newcastle (2015). Hannon was a finalist in the Little things art prize, Saint Cloche Gallery, Sydney (2021, 2020), and was selected as a Finalist in the biannual Alice Springs art prize at the Araluen Art Centre in 2022.  

Hannon has worked across a diverse array of community art projects throughout her career, having developed a unique methodology in engaging community, she employs a respectful and strengths-based approach formed around the core values of platforming artists and accessibility to creativity. Hannon lived in Indonesia for 3 years where she co-managed the funding, construction and programming of a community art centre in the remote village of Jatitujuh, West Java. This project received the Australian Arts in Asia Government award for philanthropy and community engagement in 2013. More recent projects include, 2020 NSW Government “My Community Grant” where Hannon facilitated workshops for a mural and community courtyard revitalisation in Newcastle, and over the past 5 years has collaborated with Marrawuddi Arts Centre, Numbulwar art centre and GARMA festival liaising with community members and stakeholders to design and install large-scale murals with local Indigenous artists.