Rossella Emanuele

Ella Emanuele is an artist, an educator and a researcher. Born in Italy, she lives and works in the UK. She studied sculpture at Chelsea College of Arts (BA, MA 2001-2005) and completed her Ph.D. in Fine Art Practice at the University for the Creative Arts in 2023. Emanuele is an associate member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors.

Approaching dance via fine art her practice-based research investigates dance as a medium for drawing, considering the role of the body and how it can expand our notion of what constitutes a structured space. An interest in how process led work exists in relation to three-dimensional space has been played out in several projects that use performative methodologies to activate environments. Central to the work is the interplay between drawing, sculpture and time-based media. Her most recent projects investigate how the agency of dance moves from the performative to the visual via technological means, using dance and choreography as generative modalities for contemporary drawing. Approaching drawing as a spatial and temporal activity, the act of drawing is interpreted as a choreographic activity where the line acts as a point of departure for bodily gesture and a score to respond to. The work has evolved to include collaborative and participatory practices particularly in relation to performativity.

Earlier work departed from the traditional constraints of sculpture to embrace flexibility, and precariousness expressed in the objects themselves or in the encounter with the space inhabited. Wrestling between the visual and the experiential, it used process as a speculative tool to break down the limits of mediums and privilege the immanence of the act of making over the notion of the permanent object.

Solo and group exhibitions, some of which lead up to publications have taken place in the UK, Italy, USA, France, Germany, Azerbaijan and China. Significant projects include collaborations with artists, dancers, choreographers and data visualisations designers. These include:

Organic Creative Spaces Exhibition for C&C24, University of Chicago at Bridgeport Art Center, USA, Drawing Repetitions – Drawing in Motion for DRN24 at Loughborough University, dAnCing LiNes at the James Hockey Gallery, UCA in Farnham, UK, What is Drawing Research Exhibition with the Drawing Research Group of University of West of England and Birmingham City University, Birmingham, Tenth: Art, Language, Location, at Quip&Curiosity, Cambridge, Gather Town, for C&C23, University of Chicago, Drawing in Relation, Online Exhibition curated by Arno Kramer with the Drawing Research Group at Loughborough University, I4 Residency, Virginia Tech Residency for Improvisation, Inspiration, Incubation, and Immersion at the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA, Residency at Rotterdam University Willem de Kooning Academy (NL); A History of Drawing at Camberwell Space curated by Kelly Chorpening January 2018, Where is the Body? The body and Materiality, UCA Research cluster launch event, July 2017; Whitenoise bookwork, funded by UCA, published by Marmalade visual theory distributed by Central Books; book launch at RIBA bookshop, London, June 2017; WhiteNoise bookwork with the BookRoom at Arnolfini for BABE – Bristol Artists’ Book Event; Somatic Shifts: the body and beyond in creative and critical research, symposium and exhibition at Zandra Rhodes Gallery, University for the Creative Arts, Rochester Campus; Drawing Outlines no 2, Live Performance at Fabrica Gallery for Draw to Perform 4, Brighton (UK); Formations, Copeland Gallery, commissioned by Peckham Platform for Peckham Festival, Museum of Invisible Art Yale University Radio (USA), Immateriality: Possibilities and Experiences, exhibition and symposium at Herbert Read Gallery UCA, Canterbury (UK); Drawn/Drawing Conversations exhibition and symposium, organized by the Visual Arts Research Group at the School of Art and Design, Coventry University, WhiteNoise at the Centre for Recent Drawing (C4RD), an Arts Council England and UCA funded collaborative residency and exhibition; Redeeming the Everyday residency and master class at YARAT Contemporary Art, Baku, Azerbaijan, ALL-art:language:location Cambridge; Space Interrupted, Electro Project Space, Hastings, Coastal Currents commission curated by Clare Sheppard; ACTS RE-ACTS 1, Wimbledon Space, London; DRAW 2014, Symposium and exhibitions at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, USA.