Bottom: The Queen's Speech' oil on canvas, 121.8x101.8cm
Middle:"Ring of Fire" Oil on canvas 26" x 30"
Top: The Last Supper (Stuckist 10 year anniversary) 120 cm x 190 cm. Ella Guru's Stuckist take on Da Vinci's classic.
"The idea came from the fact that there were 13 Stuckists in the original group, and 13 at the Last Supper"
from the Walker Museum - http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk
"Plays in The Deptford Beach Babes. Amsterdam Gay News 'Painter of the Year'. Used to frequent fetish clubs and spank men whom she describes as 'Tory politicians'. Had lunch with Quentin Crisp in New York: he thought she was weird"
The Walker Museum - http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk
Ella Guru: About my work
Statement from “Five Female Stuckists” show
Islington Arts Factory 6-20 March 2009
I find writing about work the hardest part – that’s why I paint. That’s why I’m a Stuckist. When painting at Art College in the 80s I was told painting was superficial and meaningless: “Art” had to something nonsensical that required a 12-page essay in order to understand it –shouldn’t that be called essay writing, rather than Conceptual “Art”?
My paintings are about life. My life, friends’ lives and strangers’ lives. I paint a stranger I spot across a bar; a few months later we’re cycling around London, drunk, in rubber dresses – and this stranger is unmistakably a man.
I love fancy dress. I’m like a child, raiding my 3-year-old’s dressing up box for feathers and flowers to wear to the next masked ball. I did burlesque during its dormant period: in Florida strip clubs where no one wanted to see gloves and feather boas. I saw one of today’s premier burlesque stars get glassed in an East End pub, back when men wanted wide open legs, not performance, humour and style.
Fetish clubs also creep back into my work, as nightlife scenes intertwine and overlap. I play in the surf band The Deptford Beach Babes, “twister polysexual surf” someone called us – lesbians, transvestites, no one knows who goes which way. Or where we end up at the end of a long night: trannie clubs, champagne bars, sweaty swamp-rock gigs, dark dungeons, or gypsy boudoirs. Most places show up in my paintings; just don’t ask too many questions…
Why this show
It’s about time someone showed a female side to Stuckism. In fact our idea started as 2 women, then 3, and then 5. And as it turned out we are all connected to Stuckism in some way. The movement too often appears male-dominated. The five of us, although diverse, have a distinctly female flavour to our work. From mythological goddesses to absinth-swilling “women” of questionable gender as well as repute, from the uncomfortable portrayal of a mass murderer had her life been “normal”, to historical satire, to Camden low-life, stabbings and all, portrayed under blue skies.
So, come and see more of these fabulous paintings at the funism Exhibition. The Wilsden Green Gallery. 16th March -9th April 2010.
Also see more on http://www.ellaguru.org.uk/index.php
http://www.myspace.com/thedeptfordbeachbabes
