ELLEN HARVEY

Artist

Ellen is a British-born conceptual artist with over 20 years of experience creating painting-based works that explore themes such as the social and ecological implications of the picturesque, nostalgia, public space, and the role of art in society. Her practice spans guerrilla street interventions, immersive installations, and large-scale public artworks.

Ellen’s work has been featured in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including the Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Groeninge Museum (Belgium), Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington DC), and Vienna Secession. Her public artworks include commissions for venues such as the Miami Beach Convention Center, New York’s Queens Plaza subway station, and the San Francisco Airport.

One of the highlights of her work is The Disappointed Tourist Series, which is a public-participatory project featuring paintings of lost sites suggested by the public. It has been the centerpiece of a traveling survey show exhibited at venues such as Butler Gallery (Ireland), Museum der Moderne Salzburg (Austria), and Turner Contemporary (UK), where it was named one of the five best institutional shows in the UK by Frieze in 2021.Other projects include The Utopia Machine, which is on view at the Los Angeles Central Library Getty Gallery, and Winter in the Summer House, an outdoor installation supported by a NYSCA grant. Upcoming exhibitions include the Chicago Architecture Center (2025) and UCF Contemporary Art Museum (2026).

Ellen has received a myriad of awards such as the Smithsonian Artists Research Fellowship, Wivina Demeester Prize for Commissioned Public Art, and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

She holds degrees from Harvard College, Yale Law School, and the Whitney Independent Study Program. She also studied at Berlin Hochschule der Künste.