your left: Ellis Moseley
Ellis Moseley is an Adelaide-based artist, living and working on traditional land of the Kaurna people.
Moseley’s practice, which encompasses installation and ceramics, seeks to draw attention to social concerns through symbolic and conceptual gestures that encourage a deeper consideration of attitudes and behaviours.
Moseley’s objects are constructed of wafer-thin overlapping petals of ceramics. The very fine layers of the vessels are made using paper clay slip, through a process whereby the slip is painted onto a plaster bat in thin layers then peeled away.
The central concern of Moseley’s practice is to explore the possibility that an artist may claim the immaterial, such as someone else’s consciousness or thoughts, as artwork. This work is part of a trajectory in art history whereby the definition of art has been challenged and broadened.
In developing this mode of practice, Moseley has gained advice from the Philosophy and Law Faculties at Flinders University, where he is currently undertaking an honours degree in Fine Art, examining the legal and philosophical possibility of claiming someone else’s consciousness as art.
Moseley has been the recipient of the Helpmann Academy Linden New Art Award 2021, the Peter Walker/Helpmann Advancement Award 2021, and The Helpmann Academy Creative Development Grant in both 2022 and 2023. He has been awarded Helpmann Academy Residencies at George Street Studios (2021) and the 215 Magill Studios Residency (2022) where he is now an ongoing studio tenant.
2022 saw Moseley’s first solo exhibitions at Linden New Art Gallery and Monash University in Victoria, where the work is on permanent display at the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (M3CS). The artist’s first solo exhibition in South Australia took take place in April 2023 at Hugo Michell Gallery.
Moseley has been awarded minor prizes in the Gallery M Contemporary Art Prize (2023) and the Helpmann Academy Creative Innovator Program (2023), as well as selection in the 2023 Helpmann Academy/SA Power Networks Public Art Project.
