biography
Bryony Ella is a Yorkshire-born artist of British and Trinidadian heritage. Her studio is based in Cornwall, South West England. She has a Fine Art BA from Bath Spa University and an MA in Museology from the University of East Anglia.
Since founding her studio in 2018, Ella’s work has been presented internationally in locations ranging from museums, galleries and festivals to cathedrals, rainforests and hospitals. She has developed touring and permanent installations across the UK, participatory art programmes in the United States and Caribbean, and regularly writes about her ‘embodied ecology’ practice, including in Wild Service: Why Nature Needs You (Bloomsbury & Right to Roam, 2024), through which she shares creative approaches to deepening experiences of community and belonging in nature.
Image: Freeling Pocket Park. Photographer: Ewelina Ruminska.
Alongside studio projects, Ella often works with nature-centred academics to design, develop and direct research-inspired public realm artworks. These collaborations build upon a background curating and project managing exhibition programmes for social history museums and science institutions, culminating at the UK’s largest research lab, The Francis Crick Institute.
Since then, her studio has produced public realm projects with organisations such as the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the British Ecological Society, University College London, Butterfly Conservation, the Grantham Institute - Climate and the Environment at Imperial College London, William Morris Gallery, Patagonia, COCO Dance Festival Trinidad, Right to Roam, Octopus Energy, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, LDA Design, Oxford City Council, Islington Council and Fusion Arts Oxford. Ella’s commitment to science engagement with a social justice focus through public art was acknowledged by the Mayor of London in 2019, who she was highlighted as part of the city’s centenary International Women’s Day celebrations.
Image: The Colour of Transformation. Photographer Ewelina Ruminska.
Currently, Ella is Research Artist and public engagement lead for the Wellcome Trust-funded project Melting Metropolis, which studies histories of urban heat and health in London, Paris, New York and Port of Spain, Trinidad.
Working within a team of environmental historians and geographers at the University of Liverpool and Queens College City University of New York, Ella designs and delivers creative programmes inspired academic research. This includes Drawing Heat workshops, the touring installation My Body is a Sundial, and the performance Stand of the Sun. She is also a mentor for Melting Metropolis community storytellers in London and New York, and co-supervisor of an embodied geographies of heat PhD research project in Port of Spain.
Image: Stand of the Sun. Photographer Alberto Romano.
