Spread Too Thin – Valerie Ellis / Noho Studios, London

A look at the latest series by Valerie Ellis, artist and former psychotherapist. Spread Too Thin once again captures the Zeitgeist of our current moment.

Spread Too Thin

Today’s post is a rare commercial gallery outing for the Salterton Arts Review. Even rarer, this is an artist whose work we have seen before. Valerie Ellis is a British-Australian artist whose journey to art took a somewhat circuitous path. Her twenty years working as a psychotherapist have helped to shape an artistic practice at the intersection of art and psychology. In Touch Me, the series the Salterton Arts Review visited in 2021 at London’s Espacio Gallery, Ellis examined brushwork as the traces of a physical presence, at a time when we were all starved for touch and human connection.

Ellis’s next series, which I discussed with the artist but have not had the privilege of seeing up close, took this art/psychology connection a step further. First Impressions is a metaphor for the traces childhood leaves on the psyche. Paper is crumpled and smoothed, the resulting lines and wrinkles highlighted, for instance with a soft layer of pastel. The result is topographical: at the same time visually compelling and a powerful way of making manifest that the past, for good or bad, cannot be undone.

And now Spread Too Thin once again captures the Zeitgeist by exploring the boundary between art and psychology. Ellis explains:

“When spread too thin, people become fragile, frayed at the edges, buckling under pressure and vulnerable. This series is a minimalist, symbolic reflection of the experience we all encounter when we take on too much, try too hard to impress others by pushing ourselves beyond healthy limits and overextending ourselves.”

SPREAD TOO THIN | Very Valerie Ellis

An intriguing offering, which I was keen to see for myself.

Overextension Laid Down On Paper

The concept here is simple. Ellis has taken paper pulp, often white but sometimes with colour, and pushed it to its limits. Literally spread it too thin. The result is a variety of different textures. The titles of the works often give a hint as to the process and sometimes the intention. We see for instance Swept, Poked, Blobbed which physically embody these actions. Shattered, Inundated or Stretched do double duty as actions and mental states. Shattered was a particular favourite of mine, delicate fragments of cellulose mounted and framed, incredibly tactile.

Aside from the concept, for me it is the tactile nature of these artworks which makes them so interesting. This series essentially captures a physical action and preserves it as a moment in time. I found myself getting up close. Looking at where the paper lifts proud of the mount, where it is thicker or thinner. It seems a shame almost to have the glass between us, and I agreed with something Valerie said to me in conversation: that some samples of the paper would have been a nice addition to allow visitors to experience the physicality of them. I don’t think samples would have lasted long, however. What is already spread too thin will quickly break down under the slightest pressure.

And this brings me to my reflection after visiting the exhibition. As with Ellis’s previous series, this is art which surfaces an issue by making it physical, but it remains up to the viewer to decide what to do with that information. In Spread Too Thin, the clue is in the title. Spread too thin. We know what it feels like to spread ourselves too thin. It’s uncomfortable. It’s unsustainable. What I’m still unsure of is what we do about it. But giving the answers tied up neatly with a bow is not the role of art, after all. The viewer, like the burned-out individual, is an active agent and needs to take a role in the process.

I’m afraid today’s post is something of a teaser, as I visited on the last day of the exhibition and so haven’t given you the opportunity to see it for yourself. You can see the series here online, with better images than I was able to capture in Noho Studios’ underground space.

Once more I look forward to seeing what is next from Valerie Ellis. These conceptual series lend themselves to a distinct series of production before moving on to the next idea (I mean maybe not: how many Concetto Spaziale did Fontana produce, for instance?). I expect that Ellis’s next exhibition will be different again, but look forward to her continuing to capture and distill our unpredictable times through art.

Spread Too Thin at Noho Studios ended on 2 October 2022: see more information here.