Nicola Ellis and Ritherdon & Co Ltd: No gaps in the line

Nicola Ellis’ first major solo exhibition will feature site-responsive installation, sculpture, painting and video; works which bring the rhythms, sounds and material of manufacturing into the gallery space in unexpected ways.

First introduced to Ritherdon & Co Ltd (est. 1895) by The National Festival of Making’s Art in Manufacturing programme, Ellis has spent two years in Darwen, Lancashire, as artist in placement at this family-run manufacturer of specialist steel enclosures. 

Working closely with experienced members of the Ritherdon team, Ellis has been observing, participating in, and at times, disrupting the ecosystem of the factory, relying on their knowledge and ability to operate machinery at the edge of its potential. New works developed during Ellis’ time at the factory expose a brutal beauty in the factory’s minimal waste materials and explore what happens when industrial processes are pushed to their limit. Ellis has previously used industrial materials that are often perceived as low value or waste. This practice started through necessity early in her career where she was supplied with cast off materials by her father, an engineer in the steel industry. Her ability to work ambitiously with what is to hand enabled Ellis to make a large site-responsive piece for DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, in 2018, as part of an artist exchange organised with Castlefield Gallery.

The exhibition includes a large site responsive work reaching up into the gallery’s double height space interacting with its architecture and towering over visitors, commanding attention through the large gallery windows that face Manchester’s Deansgate and its transport hubs. The work is being developed by feeding a CAD programmed machine instructions to punch out a drawing of itself into steel sheets which will then be sprayed the same bright industrial colours as the machine. In order to make the work Ellis and the factory will need to drive the machine beyond the normal parameters of its operation.

The nature of Ellis’s project speaks to the activity of the Artist Placement Group (APG). Founded in 1966, the organisation sought to reposition the role of the artist within a wider social context, including government and commerce. The success of this situation, where both artist and manufacturer can observe, learn and benefit from each other, is testament to Ellis’ ability to build enduring relationships, as well as the openness of Ritherdon & Co Ltd to the placement of an artist in their working environment. The company’s founding history demonstrates a long-standing commitment to creativity and experimentation, and Ellis has found a real home with the manufacturers. 

New works from Ellis’ ‘dead powder’ series – metal panels coated with ‘dead powder’ (the leftover paint from the factory’s daily jobs: a mixture of standard industrial colours and vibrant one offs), exploit the qualities of accident and excess. The paint is sprayed onto the panels until the paint slips and drips as it dries. These works have the potential to be understood as paintings and documentation of jobs processed in the paint shop. Other new work will see industrial strip lights in the gallery linked to light sensors in Ritherdon’s factory that will communicate the rhythm of welders working in real time. A video installation will display documentation of the factory’s industrial processes, showing how pace and rhythm is set, changed and communicated.

During her time in the factory, Ellis has been challenged to scale up and be more ambitious as she has observed the entire manufacturing process. These new works and methodologies have been informed in particular by studying the application of Lean Manufacturing philosophy – a philosophy aimed at the reduction of waste in the form of time, energy and materials.

PODCAST: Nicola Ellis, Dr Marsha Bradfield and Andrew Wilson In Conversation

Nicola Ellis is joined by Dr Marsha Bradfield and Andrew Wilson to discuss collaborating with people in different environments, and workplaces with particular reference to Ellis’ artist placement at Ritherdon & Co Ltd (a family-run manufacturer of specialist steel enclosures, est. 1895) and her exhibition at Castlefield Gallery.

PODCAST: Nicola Ellis and Matthew Pendergast In Conversation

Nicola Ellis speaks to Castlefield Gallery Curator & Deputy-Director, Matthew Pendergast about her practice and her artist placement at Ritherdon & Co Ltd.

360 degree Tour

Explore the exhibition Nicola Ellis and Ritherdon & Co Ltd: No gaps in the line at Castlefield Gallery in 360 degrees by clicking on the play button below. Move through the gallery space virtually, hover over pins for titles, mediums, and to find out more about each artwork.

*For the best experience, once the tour has loaded we recommend selecting the ‘View Fullscreen’ mode in the bottom/right corner.

Incidental Rendition. A collaboration between Nicola Ellis and composer, teacher, and researcher, Manoli Moriaty

Incidental Rendition is a sonic reflection of the Ritherdon factory at work. Composed for headphone listening, the piece presents the manufacturing process as a metaphorical symphony; the factory’s tools and machines are the instruments, the people working in Ritherdon are the ensemble performers, the background noise is the reverberant concert hall resulting from the factory’s architecture, and the order of the process is the conductor.     

E-Publication: Nicola Ellis, Return to Ritherdon: Photographs and Paintings

Read the publication on Issuu or download from the Gallery Downloads section below (please note it is intended to be viewed double page). The publication includes essays by Nicola Ellis, and Manoli Moriaty.

Castlefield Gallery has supported and followed Ellis’s work over several years. She has taken part in numerous exhibitions at the gallery including: LAUNCH PAD: Meanwhile See This (2012), Nicola Ellis & Aura Satz (2013) and Oh, it is easy to be clever if one does not know all these questions (2018). In 2019 Castlefield Gallery celebrated our 35th anniversary with the exhibition No Particular Place to Go? 35 years of sculpture at Castlefield Gallery which included work by Ellis, and later that year we took her work to the Manchester Contemporary Art Fair where Dead powder series: Yellow, (2019) was selected by The Manchester Contemporary Art Fund* for acquisition into the public collection of Manchester Art Gallery, where it is now on display.

In 2020 Ellis has been the recipient of an Artist Award Scheme established by the Henry Moore Foundation and designed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Special thanks to the Ronnie Duncan Art Foundation and Castlefield Gallery Commissioning Patron Prof. Chris Klingenberg