Staff Profiles

Areas of Expertise

History via its material and cultural traces, site specific installation, colonial history, Interdisciplinary practice, landscape and contemporary painting.

Teaching Areas

Painting, Experimental Media, Colour, Text and Image, Painting into Video.

Current Research Activity

Nicole Ellis's research includes the Sphinx, Sandcastle Project (early stages) which is a digital project investigating the relationship between iconic structures in Egypt, India, Australia and Britain significant to colonisation. By probing the origins of sandcastle building in Australia alongside residues of ancient fortification systems and persistent icons of a colonial past, it seeks metaphors of impermanence relevant to a contemporary global crisis

Nicole will be having a solo exhibition at Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide, from June 28 to July 23 2006.

Nicole is also working towards the development of the sound component for Bivouac. An animation project which investigates the circulation of architectural traces between India, Australia and Britain relative to the colonization and migration. Architecture of impermanence and change is visualized, relevant to issues of culture and (Australian) history.

In 2006, Nicole will spend three months in Rome as part of the Australia Council Residency at the British School, International Research Centre. The British School at Rome is a Research Centre (since 1901) for the study and investigation of archaeology, architecture, fine arts and Roman history. Nicole will perform primary research into ancient artisan’s techniques for reinterpretation in contemporary two-dimensional artworks. Work from this project will be exhibited at the British School at Rome Gallery during her residency.

From a discipline of painting, Nicole's early work investigated the construction and visualisation of space in western culture in relation to the history of art, landscape painting, and contemporary theory. Her current research, while continuing to address aspects of this key framework has widened in its techniques and concerns, by focusing more closely on Australia’s colonial history via its material, cultural and historical traces.

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

2006, New Work. Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide, SA.

2004, Interventions. Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide, SA.

2004, Residue. Tin Sheds Gallery, Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW.

2001, From The Floor: People's Federal Convention, Bathurst, 1896.. Permanent work, Howick Street, Bathurst, Bathurst, NSW.

1999, All that goes with it. Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide, SA.

1998, Below the Waterline. Olympic Arts Festival, Sydney, NSW.

1998, A Sea Change. Customs House, Sydney, NSW.

Group Exhibitions

2006, Twenty/20 Vision. Ultimo Project Inc. 1986-2006, Parliament House, Sydney, NSW.

2005, London Looking East: Australian artists in the Australia Council Studios, 1985-2002. Plimsoll Gallery, Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania.

2005, Members Exhibition. Asia Australian Art Association, Sydney, Australia.

2005, Notebooks at Docklands; Origin of Ideas Archive. Hobart Summer Festival, Constitution Docks, Tasmania.

2005, The First International Sculpture Symposium. The Kunming International Sculpture Festival, Kunming, China.

2005, Small Offerings: Srilanken & Australian artists exhibition for Tsunami relief effort in Srilanka. The Cross Art Projects, Sydney, NSW.

2003, Significant Tilt - Art and the Horizon of Meaning. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW.

2002, The Third International Sculpture Symposium. Hue Festival, Hue, Vietnam.

2001, A Studio in Paris: Australian Artists at the Cite 1967-2000. S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, NSW.

2000, Tachikawa International Art Festival. Tachikawa International Art Festival, Tokyo, Japan.

2000, Harbour. Olympic Arts Festival, Museum of Sydney, NSW.

Grants

Faculty Research Grant Program, College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, . (2006),

Australia Council Visual Arts Board Skills and Arts Development Grant, Overseas Residency, British School at Rome, International Research Centre.