It has become a valued tradition that the Grand Prix winners of the ROTLICHT Festival Open Call are given a solo exhibition in our gallery, complementing the group exhibition at the festival headquarters. This year, we are especially pleased to present the work of Canadian artist Ella Morton. Morton’s innovation lies in transferring the idea of inexorable destruction from the realm of the earth into the expanse of the sky. In her project The Residue of Star light, she portrays extreme landscapes that, through the effects of climate change, have transformed into uninhabitable environments. Personal childhood memories play a significant role in Morton’s work. As a multimedia artist working at the intersection of photography and moving image, she employs a range of techniques: manipulation and the deliberate destruction of material are essential components of her artistic engagement with the image and its meaning.
About the artist:
Ella Morton (she/her) is a Canadian visual artist and filmmaker living in Tkarón:to/Toronto, on the land of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenoshaunee and the Wendat peoples. Her expedition-based practice has brought her to residencies and projects across Canada, Nordic Europe, Greenland, Latin America, Australia and Antarctica. Working primarily with lens-based media, she uses experimental analogue processes to capture the sublime and fragile qualities of remote landscapes. Reflecting on how the medium of photography is changing in the digital age, she aims to uncover how photographs can show more than a straightforward depiction of reality, and how the alchemy of analogue techniques can be reinvented in the present day to tell deeper stories within images.