Liz Elton
‘Elton asks us to do the work of staying with the grief as something non-linear and inherently connected to the processes and ecological cycles of life. Compost-like, her metamorphic practice generously opens up a space between letting go and holding on, a site for conversations and continuations.’ Anna Souter, 2025
Liz Elton’s practice considers issues of waste, compost and the recycling of matter. She explores loss and grief; potential and hope; nourishment and care; environment
and temporality. Her work is grounded in landscape and still life painting and she employs a wide range of media, from photography, video and print to large-scale sculptural installation.
Her installations are often site-specific and include the innovative use of compostable
materials such as bioplastic grounds which are loosely sewn together with silk, coloured with
kitchen waste and water miscible paints. While the work will naturally decay and
decompose over time it is often embedded with soil and seeds of medicinal plants,
vegetables or cover crops suggesting growth, nurture and the potential for new life.
A series of editioned prints of her kitchen compost begun during lockdown track food and flowers passing through the home, referencing historical still life painting.
Biography
Liz has completed a Hospital Rooms commission, is the recipient of a Mark Rothko Memorial Trust Artist in Residence Award, and her work has been shown in the John Moores Painting Prize exhibition three times. She has been artist in residence at Florence Trust, Groundswell Regenerative Farming Festival, and on the Isle of Eigg at the Bothy Project, supported by Winsor and Newton. Recent shows include ‘Landscape Painting Now’, Messums, Cork Street, London, ‘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. Solo and two person shows include ‘Liz Elton and Effie Burns’, Kath Wood’s ‘Art at Home’, ‘Work in Progress’, Fitzrovia Gallery, London, ‘Ground, Falling Away’, The Gunpowder Store, Daugavpils Fortress, Latvia, and ‘Yield’ at Gallery 163, Herne Hill. She has a BA in History of Art, UCL, and a BA in Painting (Wimbledon) and an MA in Fine Art (Chelsea), UAL.
