ELLA RIZZI
Distance
26 September/ 01 November, 2026

Distance is a collection of small scale oil paintings investigating painting as a practise. On handmade wood panels and stretched canvas, colour, gesture, shape, and surface control a new focus of abstraction, material and tactility.

Unplanned and instinctive, the works are informed by domestic scenes as table compositions, nature, in garden scenes, flowers and trees. From these foundations, forms are blurred and moments of complete image rejection emerge, and the object becomes suspended between layers of oil and brush strokes.

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In her interdisciplinary oil painting and textile work, Ella Rizzi creates images that piece together fragmented memories to suggest an always incomplete and shifting understanding of histories. Her practise is a constant, intimate inquiry into rediscovery and recollection, and her paintings, in their innumerable layers, delineate the inevitable erosion of memory and identity across generations. Ella uses reclaimed ephemera from her Northern Italian family history as reference to relentlessly pursue an understanding of a past within the images, while also watching as any information becomes blurred among the oil and coats of paint.

Living and working in Melbourne Australia, Rizzi has undertaken a Diploma in Visual Arts (RMIT) and a Bachelor in Fine Arts (Victorian College of the Arts). Recent solo exhibitions include Loom, Trocadero Projects, Footscray; Imitami (Valentina), Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy; and To all who lived before me, Green Floor Gallery, Fitzroy. She has also exhibited in group exhibitions at BlackCat Gallery, Joseph Beuys Cafe, VCA, Motor Works Gallery and Trocadero Projects. Ella participated in an art festival at The Gasometer Hotel and an artist workshop at the MPavillion, Melbourne. She has received the Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship and the West End Projects Award for excellence in her studies and graduation work at the Victorian College of the Arts.

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