Biography

Bryony Ella (née Benge-Abbott, b. 1984) is a Yorkshire-born, Cornwall-based, artist of British and Trinidadian heritage. She has a Fine Art BA from Bath Spa University and an MA in Museology from the University of East Anglia. Today, her interdisciplinary practice moves between the studio, the outdoors and urban public realm spaces, involving cycles of plein-air drawing, mixed-media painting and installation-making as she furthers her own research into embodied ecology as a creative practice.

Ella regularly collaborates with nature-centred institutions, academics and practitioners to produce participatory and public art projects, which over the past eight years have been presented internationally in locations ranging from museums, galleries and festivals to cathedrals, rainforests and hospitals. Her studio paintings are held in private and public collections, and she has written about her wild drawing practice in Wild Service: Why Nature Needs You, which was published in 2024 by Bloomsbury with the Right to Roam campaign.

Ella’s creative practice integrates a professional background working in public engagement and exhibitions at institutions such as The Women’s Library and Wellcome Collection, which culminated in establishing and leading the inaugural exhibitions programme at the UK’s largest scientific research lab, The Francis Crick Institute. In 2019, her commitment to science engagement through public art was acknowledged by the Mayor of London, who highlighted her as part of the city’s centenary International Women’s Day celebrations. Since then, she has worked with organisations such as the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Queens College City University of New York, the British Ecological Society, University College London, Butterfly Conservation, the Grantham Institute - Climate and the Environment, Imperial College London, William Morris Gallery, Patagonia, COCO Dance Festival Trinidad, Octopus Energy, LDA Design, Oxford City Council, Islington Council, Haringey Council, Fusion Arts Oxford and St Mungo’s. Past project funders have included UKRI, Arts Council England and British Council Americas.

Currently, Bryony Ella is working on a long-term, Wellcome funded project with environmental historians at the University of Liverpool, who are investigating urban heat islands in London, Paris and New York. Within this project she is co-supervising a PhD looking at embodied geographies of heat in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and working towards a new installation at Orleans House Gallery titled My Body is a Sundial, opening March 2025.