Ellie Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist working with a range of media taking the form of a largely playful and colourful array of drawing, sculpture and video work that simultaneously exposes a darker side. Exploring concepts surrounding food and the emotional responses and social interactions involving consumption and eating, her work delves into the often very intimate relationships we have with food and our own bodies.

Drawing is vital to her practice, and the subsequent sculptures, props, costumes and video pieces are all derived from them. Working with a range of media and materials, she utilises forms of prop making and puppetry to bring drawings and characters to life in video format. By physically animating characters and environments through these techniques she explores scenarios and interactions that take place within the body in a humorous but also unsettling way. Creating video installations displaying films behind cutout drawings she creates imagined and reinterpreted internal settings. These environments become vessels to explore our relationships with food and our bodies.

By navigating the shift between the humorous or playful and the dark or unsettling she is able to explore a more sinister side to her practice. Through the use of childlike colours and imagery she expresses difficult and serious topics and the struggles that we go through in our day to day lives in a more palatable way.

Influenced by her own experiences and recovery from an eating disorder her practice has developed in a way that has helped her to heal.