Ellie Tessa Godworth makes precious objects for rituals that don't quite exist. Trained as a gold and silversmith, she works with 18 carat gold, fine silver, titanium, steel, hand-blown glass, flocking, rubber and beeswax. For fifteen years she has been interested in the pursuit of an ideal, and the objects, rituals and elaborate performances that accompany it.

Her latest answer is the gym. Gravity & Grace: Gym-Hymn, her 2025 solo installation in Melbourne, took its title from the philosopher Simone Weil and its subject from Godworth's own morning gym routine. She filled the space with life-sized glass dumbbells, mild steel furniture and small objects that look like equipment but can't quite be used as it. Some of the dumbbells even ring when you move them. In her hands, bodybuilding, with all its discipline and its competitive, oiled-up glamour, becomes something close to a religious ritual. The objects hint at the body without showing it: a handle, a curve, something you might hold, wear or play.

Then she gives them names like pets. Moo, Boo, Peach. That gap between the serious craft and the silly name is where the work comes alive. These objects are made with total precision, but they don't take themselves too seriously. 

She also likes to invent stories. Her Chamber Flute (2024), made in blue and green titanium, came with a made-up history: a medieval instrument that had supposedly travelled from the Middle East to Europe and ended up in a museum that doesn't exist. JJ Search & The Possible Port (2023) created the belongings of an imaginary sea captain, inspired by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, using silver objects and an artist book.

What holds it all together is an ongoing artistic investigation, underpinned by technical expertise. Fifteen years of soldering, polishing and wirework are what make the humour work. The objects are funny, and they are also made exactly right.

Post-American Fine Arts presents her work for the first time in Asia at Tokyo Jazz Club 2026.

In Tokyo the works move from the gym to the shower: from the most public place for showing off the body to the most private.

"It looks like very simple work. That’s what makes it so hard to do. Ellie knows that. Most people don’t. Ting Feng (Director) Post-American Fine Arts

Godworth is shown within Washed Up, Paid Off and Nobody’s Clean, and/or Some Things Look Better in the Shower, Post-American Fine Arts presentation with Brochevski (Amai Rawls Jr.), Cindy Chinn, Jason Meadows, Eric Wesley, Geraldine Belmont and Victor Payares.