Ellie Hoskins: what we talk about when we don’t know what to talk about at Bridge Cottage

Port Sunlight’s quaint, chocolate box surroundings are currently home to a very healthy dose of absurdity – Bridge Cottage presents what we talk about when we don’t know what to talk about by Ellie Hoskins, as part of the Independents Biennial.

The exhibition consists of charcoal drawings, from smaller, text-only posters to larger works collaged together to create layered scenes. The centrepiece takes inspiration from Caravaggio – the master painter’s classical scenes are brought into the modern day in monochrome chiaroscuro and thick charcoal. The drama remains, only this time it’s about hummus lids and Fairy liquid. 

It’s safe to say that Ellie Hoskins’ artistic output is one of a kind – instantly recognisable regardless of the medium used. She creates animations, drawings, sculptures, and paintings, all of which are often accompanied by text in bubble font that feels like pages ripped out of a personal diary. Hoskins’ wry work lays bare the thoughts and anxieties of both a specific character (the author?) and… ourselves.

The scenes in what we talk about when we don’t know what to talk about depict nameless characters, heads drooping and faces ranging from bewildered to utterly indifferent, having uneasy conversations about the everyday. It’s in those moments that our unfiltered thoughts come out, the kind so random yet mundane that sharing them with other people haunts us before we fall asleep. Hoskins’ example of talking about keeping your Christmas tree under your bed in June illustrates that haunting feeling incredibly well.

If the content wasn’t intimate enough, the charcoal drawings hold the marks of the artist’s hand, with fingerprints and smudges all over the paper-covered pillars.

Hoskins herself says it best: “When making the work in this show, I abandoned the idea of trying to make work that said something good, or wise, or funny, and opted instead to shine a light on the crap things that I find myself saying in real-life conversations.” In her hands, angst sits together with satire in a very limited colour palette.

Yet behind the banal small talk, there lies a need for deeper connection that’s so difficult to articulate it becomes entwined in the absurdity of daily life – in the absence of anything real to say, we turn to discussing snacks and chores. As a result, there’s darkness but there’s humour too – that fleeting, notoriously-difficult-to-find feature in contemporary art comes naturally to Hoskins and imbues the drawings in the exhibition with a sense of lightness.

what we talk about when we don’t know what to talk about is, without a doubt, one of the best exhibitions of the Independents Biennial this year. Don’t miss it.