Biography
Liz’s work begins in painting, drawing on landscape and still-life genres and moving away from the wall to explore the potential of waste and the recycling of matter. Much of her work is made using compostable cornstarch food waste recycling bags, coloured with vegetable dyes from kitchen waste, sewn together with silk and embedded with seeds, dust and waste. Often site specific or site responsive, the resulting works are light and floating and move as the air moves around them, so may mimic a tide going in and out as people walk past or appear to breathe in the wake of a breeze or air conditioning. The material is designed with the intention to disappear, embracing its own ephemerality and demise. As the work ages it accumulates damage allowing new views of its environment and taking on new forms.
Residencies include the Mark Rothko Museum in Latvia which provided opportunities for installations in derelict buildings, in particular a 19th century hospital, in which the work has taken on resonances relating to care, hope and time. Commissions include Hospital Rooms, with Kent and Medway Trust. Solo and two person shows include ‘Takeaway’, Punta Gallery and Cable-Depot, Sofia, ‘Fragile Surface’ with Charlie Warde and Cable-Depot, Artissima, Turin, ‘Liz Elton and Effie Burns’, Kath Wood’s ‘Art at Home’, ‘Ground, Falling Away’, The Gunpowder Store, Daugavpils Fortress, Latvia, and ‘Yield’ at Gallery 163, Herne Hill. Recent group shows include 'Landscape Painting Now', Messums, Cork Street, London, ‘Cathedral’, HilbertRaum, Berlin, ‘Market of Desire’, Cable Depot, Sofia, Bulgaria, Hospital Rooms Digital Art School Installation and Auction, Hauser and Wirth, Savile Row, London, and 'Life Boat', APT, Deptford.
Liz has a BA in History of Art, UCL, a BA in Painting (Wimbledon, UAL) and an MA in Fine Art (Chelsea, UAL). She is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors, Public Sculpture and Statues Association and Contemporary British Painting.