The Artist

Ruth Virgo is a final-year BA (Hons) Commercial Photography student at AUB, specialising in portraiture through both fashion and documentary storytelling. Her work explores themes of identity, creative expression and sustainability, with a focus on amplifying underrepresented voices and communities.

Ruth enjoys creating dynamic images on location, often photographing in natural environments across both fashion and documentary contexts. Her interests in textiles, colour and craft traditions lead her to see clothing as more than simply fabric stitched together, but as a form of self-expression that carries personal weight and cultural meaning. Her project Making Spaces, which documented artists in their studios across Dorset and southwest Ireland, led to a university commission to photograph the eight AUB archetypes for the 2026–27 prospectus.

Raised in Southeast Asia and frequently returning to the region, Ruth’s work is informed by cross-cultural experiences and textile heritage. These influences shape her visual storytelling, combining bold colour with thoughtful narratives around culture, identity and connections to nature.

Want to see more of Ruth's work? Visit her website and also on Instagram @ruthvirgophoto.

Ellie Pratt is a painter who graduated from AUB's BA (Hons) Fine Art course in 2025. During her degree, she created a series of large-scale paintings for her courses degree show titled Triadic Portals, exploring themes of landscape and environment through abstracted, colourful forms. Ellie found inspiration from taking textures and shapes that are found in diverse terrains. This includes underwater landscapes, mountains, and rock formations.

By also incorporating figures into her landscape paintings, Ellie introduces narrative that prompt questions about what these landscapes represent and why people coexist within them, inviting themes of human existence amongst landscape, leading to environmental politics.

Her practice developed through daily studio work and participation in workshops at AUB, where she explored new ways of handling paint. Experimenting with removing and layering paint, she built textured surfaces that create depth through accumulated shape, gesture, and mark-making. This physical process of layering and removing became central to her visual language, resulting in richly layered abstract paintings which resembled landscape.

Since graduating, Ellie has participated in an art market, connecting with other creatives and expanding her professional network. She was also selected to exhibit one of her third-year paintings titled Lunar Horizon at Upton Gallery, located within Upton Country Park in Poole. In September 2026, she'll begin the MA Painting course at AUB, continuing to develop her practice after a year of gathering ideas and inspiration.