Happy Hour
Acrylic on canvas, 75 x 94 cm, 2025
 
Artwork Statement
Ellen Jury’s paintings navigate the emotional terrain of contemporary suburban life through the depiction of banal yet strangely charged spaces. Her work begins with spontaneous photographs taken on daily walks—moments of stillness that reveal unnoticed corners of interiors, transitional spaces, and urban exteriors. These images are then transformed into tightly composed, flat paintings that hold within them an eerie stillness and a quiet sense of alienation.
Jury’s subjects are familiar: stairwells, hallways, nondescript street corners, waiting rooms. Yet when rendered in paint, these ordinary places evoke a peculiar mix of calm and discomfort. The stripped-back detail and static composition amplify the psychological weight of emptiness, conjuring an atmosphere of existential loneliness. However, rather than despair, her work invites contemplation—highlighting the strange beauty of silence, the comfort of routine, and the gentle coexistence of melancholy and contentment.
Through her exploration of emotional dissonance and spatial familiarity, Jury captures the fragile emotional layers embedded in everyday life. Her work resonates with viewers who have also felt the haunting quiet of suburbia, the nostalgia of disappearing urban spaces, or the disorienting stillness of modern life.
 
Artist Bio
Ellen Jury is a Melbourne-based painter whose practice is grounded in observations of her immediate environment and shaped by her personal experience of suburban life. Born and raised in Brunswick, and now working from her studio in Coburg, Jury draws from the emotional textures of familiar places—those often-overlooked in-between spaces of daily routine. She completed her Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), where she participated in multiple group exhibitions, culminating in the VCA Grad Show 2025. Since graduating, she has continued to exhibit her work in group shows across Melbourne.
Through a combination of spontaneous photography and refined painting, Jury creates precise compositions that depict urban and domestic spaces. Her work reveals a subtle, haunting strangeness in the everyday, invoking the emotional complexity that arises from stillness, repetition, and change. Her ongoing practice reflects a commitment to capturing the quiet psychological landscapes that reside beneath the surface of modern life.