Ellis Smith's practice engages with the coast, woodlands, wetlands and fields of Kent / Sussex (South-East England). Through wandering, gathering, and transforming earthly materials, such as soil and clay. Making artworks that reflect on deep time, environmental change, and human interaction with the land. The work asks how we experience land in the age of the Anthropocene, where encounters with place are often fractured or lost.
Drawing on principles from Land Art, the work incorporates direct engagement with the landscape and natural materials. Environmental Art for its ecological concerns and emphasis on sustainability and non-extractive processes. Site-Specific / Responsive Practice, with the work deeply tied to particularities of place and responds to their physical, historical, and ecological context. Psychogeography through a walking-based practice, intuitive explorations of landscape and mapping. As well as Ecofeminism for its care-based, reciprocal approach to land, materials, and attention to the exploitation of the earth as a resource.
The work aims to encourage a deeper, more embodied connection with local landscapes by engaging directly with the ground beneath our feet. Through material exploration, my work seeks to re-inhabit and unlearn enstangement from the earth by confronting the reality of our disconnection, inviting people to reconsider their relationship with land as something intimate, reciprocal, and rooted in place. An attempt to ask: What remains of a place after extraction and neglect? And can we begin to reimagine more attentive, ethical ways of being with the land?
CV
Education / Awards / Certificates:
£1k Degree Show Award for emerging talent, Awarded by The Arts Society Mid Kent (2025)
Basic DBS Certificate (May 2025)
First Class BA (Hons) Fine Art, University for the Creative Arts (2025)
Foundation Diploma in Art, Design and Media Practice (2022)
Full Automatic Driving License (2022)
International Baccalaurete Visual Arts Diloma (2021)
Pearson BTEC Extended Certificate in Art and Design (2021)
Creative Facilitator:
'Hikaru Dorodango Workshop'
Shiny mud ball workshops at Skinners Kent Academy. A series of workshops with the Year 10 Students. Over 40 sucessful dorodangos!
Solo & Collaborative exhibitions:
2025
"Of earth and hand" / Sarah Baulch Gallery, 104 Mortimer Street, Herne Bay / 28th June - 12th July 2025
As apart of the opening to the new home of The Sarah Baulch Gallery in the old church at 104 Mortimer Street, Herne Bay - Sarah invited TREAD collective to rework the large scale installation pieces she discovered at the UCA grad show. Each of our pieces are inspired by walking kentish landscapes, reciprocal making and togetherness. Tread Collective's first exhibition engaged an audience with earthly materials and envoked discussions regarding human interaction with land in hopeful and meaningful interactions. Ultimately, the work called to protect local landscapes and an introduced Tread Colletives aspirations.
"From a distance" Fine Art Grad Show 10th-25th June 2025
“From a distance” is a response to Kentish (South East England) landscapes shaped through wandering, gathering, and transforming earth into form. It explores how we experience land in the age of the Anthropocene — where encounters with place are often fractured or lost. A panoramic billboard, earth-formed monoliths and spheres, and screens with video and sound construct a mediated ‘spectacle’ of place. Together, they juxtapose the direct, embodied engagement of walking in the land and a distanced technological representation.The billboard acts as both a window and a barrier, symbolising a longing for connection with nature, while confronting the reality of our disconnection. At its core is the retired hoverport of Pegwell Bay, a site once dominated by industry, now slowly reclaimed by nature. Its haunting beauty holds both ruin and resilience. The work asks: What remains of place after extraction, neglect, and spectacle? And can we begin to reimagine more attentive, ethical ways of being with the land?
"UCA{SUSTAIN}: edit 1" / Environment Collective Exhibition / Herbert Read Gallery / 26th Feburary - 6th March 2025
An environmental exhibition of works by students across the UCA Canterbury campus. Connection with nature is one of many themes centering around planet sustainability that runs through the works that will be on display.
"Elsewhere" A collaborative outdoor exhibtion, as part of the campus wide show at UCA. 27th January-2nd Feburary
We were challenged to use an unconventional outdoor space as a gallery in our week-long show ‘Elsewhere’. We invite you to explore the boundaries of the imagination and nature, pushing you to challenge your perception and to inspire curiosity. ‘Earthen Lumps’ is a response to five locations in Kent. Each mud ball, or dorodango, is carefully formed from mud collected along the Kentish coast, woodlands, wetlands and fields. Shaped and polished into fragile, precious forms, they rest upon old dressed stones. Together, they showcase a harmonious local palette, reveal the transformation of earthly material, and embody the patient, meditative art of the dorodango. By allowing the dorodangos to be exposed to the elements during this week-long outdoor exhibit, they will undergo further transformation, engaging in a quiet collaboration with their surroundings.
2024
"Komorebi: Suspended Woodland" At The Herbert Read Gallery. A project for UCA’s Green Week, 22- 26 April. The timing connects to Earth Day on 22 April. https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-2024/
Responding to woodland as a fragile and precious ecology, Komorebi: Suspended Woodland is an exhibition developed by a group of artists on the BA Fine Art Course at UCA. Komorebi, the Japanese word for dappled sunlight filtering through trees, is a reminder of the beauty and ephemerality of the natural world. The works in the gallery have all been hung so nothing touches the walls or the floor, a canopy of suspended artworks. This creates an ethereal, otherworldly space, connecting to the woodland as a place we go to in our imagination. It also speaks of the vulnerability of nature, and our impact on it. A fragment of ancient woodland can still be found within walking distance of the UCA campus, squeezed on all sides by housing developments, but still a wild space to get lost in.
"Ikebana" As part of the Monkton Sculpture Trail curated by Ruth Rollason at The Monkton Nature Reserve. July - September 2024
Inspired by the Japanese flower arrangement practice ‘Ikebana’ and its empowerment of fleeting beauty, a sculpture which symbolizes the immense web of wildlife at The Monkton Nature Reserve. As a contemporary artist living in Kent, my practice builds on the venturing and gathering of materials. Creating site-responsive work with materials found and hand-processed with special care taken to understand each found material, acknowledging that they have weathered by time and elements. Each stone or stick collected is rooted in the timeless rhythms of its surroundings, in this case, the chalk quarry.
2023
"Growing Pains" In Collaboration with Sophie Chan, UCA Project Space, Canterbury
Project ‘Growing Pains’ is about creating an environment reminiscent of my childhood while sparking a universal feeling of nostalgia. In collaboration with Sophie Chan, we reconstructed a magical childhood bedroom with familiarity and comfort at the forefront of our creation. We wanted to create a physical space which carries the weight of the psychological landscape of childhood, taking you back to a state of mind filled with wonder and imagination. The installation should leave you yearning particularly for the emotional state of childhood, a time when innocence is imminent, and imagination thrives. Bringing childhood drawings to life through animation allows the unique opportunity to take a closer look at what is authentically imagined as a child, giving the audience a moment to reconnect with this state of mind.
2022
Foundation Show, A public exhibit at The University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury
"Free House" Group Exhibit curated by Amelia Johnson at The Brewery Tap Gallery, Folkstone
2021
End of Year show, Public Exhibit at Skinners Kent Academy, Tunbridge Wells
Other work experience including Front of house waitressing at The Tulip Tree Tearoom, Chiddingstone (2019-2021), Sales Assistant at M.Saltmarsh Artist Materials, Tunbridge Wells (2022-2024), Retail Assistant at Home Bargains, Canterbury (2024-2025), Sales Advisor at Pets Corner, Crowborough (Present).
