ELLA DUNN

Tender Ground

Sophie Gannon Gallery

21 Apr 2026 – 09 May 2026

For Tender Ground, Ella Dunn presents a series of drawings and paintings capturing cropped segments of larger scenes. Synonymous with her wider practice, they function like film stills and allude to snippets of mundane daily moments. The drawings usually come first. Dunn allows the ground of the paintings to be visible, functioning as active agents—a method developed on a prior residency in Portugal.

While making these works, Dunn fell pregnant. A miscarriage followed and the process of painting became a means to work through this time. Dunn noted, “I realised, while we have control over so much of life, this was one aspect where I had no control—your body just does what it does.”

Dunn is pregnant again and in her third trimester. I am currently at the same stage of pregnancy. Fertility journeys are personal and unpredictable. Mine was long, involved IVF, and many disappointments along the way. To get through this period, I wrote my story. Dunn has intuitively painted hers. Rather than painting the story of her loss, she has painted the story of what she needed next. She became drawn to actions. The works—fragmentary scenes depicting momentary outtakes of daily life—are filled with acts of doing. Scenes of digging, dancing, care and maintenance are captured. Dunn has depicted acts of tending as a means for self-care. She explains, “I was drawn to simple actions to keep well and grounded.” Drawing and painting allowed time to process this experience in a slow way, at just the right pace.

The smaller paintings came last and respond to this time more directly. Before you were here you were gone, depicts a lone seagull in a patchy sky. A moment captured from watching birds circling. An accompanying work, The one that grew, presents the curtain pattern from Dunn’s baby room.

While painting scenes of care, Dunn also tended to her garden. She planted many seeds during this time, including a yield of cosmos. Only one of the cosmos seeds grew. A friend gifted me marigold seeds recently, to plant as a symbol of the new life inside me. Our own becomings and unravellings are often in tune with the natural forces outside of us.

Acts of tending and an astute awareness of the value in the small moments of daily life, carries Dunn from one season to the next and allows her to appreciate the gravity of small and large moments along the way.

— Josephine Mead, 2026