Ella Whateley: The Ways We Pray

Ella Whateley is an Australian visual artist who undertakes practice-led-research through painting and drawing. The works in this exhibition draw on her interaction with diverse religious traditions in Indonesia, Taiwan, China, Japan, Nepal, Britain and Australia. They represent Whateley's experience and interpretation of a variety of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto and Christian ways of praying. The works also reflect aspects of the distinctive environments in which they were produced.

As a visual artist, Whateley's primary language is abstraction. Though reference to the real world can be seen, it is through the lens of abstraction that she seeks to interpret some of the ways humans pray and, secondarily, express the different contexts of the experiences. Whateley makes particular use of rhythm and mark-making as interpretive and expressive devices.