As part of her work, Ellis has created sculptures from plaster featuring workers carrying out their daily tasks.
“They’re just really, really great people and fun,” she said.
“It’s about bringing some of that into the gallery and sharing that with people that might not necessarily get the chance to meet them or experience the factory floor for themselves.”
The exhibition also features videos shot from nine angles around the welding booth at Ritherdon using digital cameras and large works suspended throughout the space.
Matthew Bradley, an electrical and wiring operative, welcomed the opportunity to highlight the manufacturing work that is going on behind the factory walls as part of the exhibition.
“It would be nice for people to still carry on doing [manufacturing], rather than get just some robot, like they do in Japan, just to assemble it all, because it’s the human touch,” he said.
“A machine will do it the same but then people do it differently – little quirks in it and stuff like that.”