Elizabeth Jackson

Elizabeth lives and works in London. In 2013 she graduated from a BA in Fine Art from Central Saints Martins. Before arriving at the RCA in 2019 she was working in the charity sector on socially engaged creative projects.

She has been selected for the Anglo-Swedish Society exchange programme for 2022, where she will develop a new body of work at Konstfack in Stockholm.

Elizabeth works to commission as well as for exhibitions. She welcomes conversations with galleries and organisers and looks to partake in residencies globally.

Using visceral language as a catalyst for intuitive making, I create compositions comprised of slipcast found objects and handbuilt gestures.

They oscillate between

the familiar and the otherworldly

the everyday and the abstract

the rapidly formed and the pored over

Playing with techniques, texture, colour, scale and form the work invites the viewer on a journey of visual association and intrigue.

At the heart of my process is a concern with embodied modes of knowledge production and the transformation of clay into something, rooted in knowledge that can’t quite be explained verbally but is activated within us. A translation of my own experience of being in the world, the things I see and feel, the clay that stains my hands and the process of learning and discovering meaning through making.

The work is the residue of this making and my compositions the result of contemplative and playful arrangement which initiates conversation between the objects and the viewers who choose to look at them.

— Library of things, ceramic components used to create compositions.

Medium:

Ceramic components

All of the works presented on this page are part of very interesting thoughts to think, a series of compositions produced using ceramic components taken from my library of things (pictured above). The series was driven by a process of gathering words, abstract objects, everyday objects, colours, gestures and a continually growing set of questions. Through intuitive making I explored these gathered things, a process of translating words and objects into clay to produce components for my library. Though the work of my hands might not directly reflect the words or objects used as a starting point, they are a translation of such in all their ambiguity. Their placement with each other in composition allows for interaction between both object and viewer.

For a more detailed look at my approach to research, gathering and making please scroll down to my artist book, What do you have to offer? at the bottom of the page.