Ella Porter

Ella is drawn to clay’s unique ability to preserve the act of making, and to how both conscious and unconscious moments of touch become held within the surface of the ceramic object.

Her work demonstrates a strong relationship between surface and form, informed by a BA in Painting and Printmaking and an MA in Ceramics. Ella references historic ceramic artefacts, social and painting theory, exploring ideas around the mark of the maker, temporality, trace and place.

Careful, subtle interventions – made at key moments during clay’s mutable states – bring her works into being. By visually scanning the surface of an evolving piece, she reads the impressions it may have collected, which directly inform processes of layering and erasing. A work reaches its conclusion when there is a sense of something pre-existing revealing itself.

Ella holds an MA in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art and received a QEST scholarship to support her studies. Her work is held in private and public collections, with a recent acquisition by the V&A following the debut of her work at Collect Art Fair in 2025.