I make spaces, installations with sound and objects spilling out or places to rest and reflect. Using found, collected and crafted objects and combining text, sound, moving image and objects to tell a story.
I’m drawn to where the archive meets embodied practice—where dusty, structured, ordered systems collide with the messy, nonlinear processes of thought, emotion, and memory.
I start with collecting and accumulating, then I stitch, print and craft; slow processes that let me think. Ceramic rememberings, a weighted quilt filled with pebbles, moving image with fragmented narrative, the sound of voice and the sea. I combine all of these elements to make or find meaning and use writing as a way to work out how I feel, to bring the story together.
The work has a tactile, material presence. Found fabrics, archival tape, wooden objects, pebbles. Things reused and reworked. It suggests the passage of time, heavy with association. There’s a visual order, things arranged aesthetically and precisely. Grids appear frequently. There is performance to camera, ‘archival’ gestures - collect-sort-categorise-store with a playful quality. And there's a particular palette, the colour of old documents, oxidised metals and faded textiles, mixed with vibrant, softened colours. Dusty rose, teal, soft blues, oranges and deep earthy tones. Soft and bright. The colours of dreams and memories. The sound is subtle, beds of drone like pebbles crashing to the sea, dreamlike resonant sounds, meditative and thoughtful.
I use writing to uncover another layer to the work and I think about archives and bodies, materiality, memory and personal narrative. Considering how objects are charged, how loss and grief can be symbolised in objects and how archival systems or gestures can be used as a framework for practice and to understand emotions.
Bio
Lisa Risbec is a visual artist based in West Yorkshire. Alongside her practice she works as an Imaging Assistant at John Rylands Library and has also worked as a photographer, creative facilitator, mentor, curator & researcher. Over the past 10 years, she has worked for organisations such as: Cartwheel Arts, Pool Arts and ARC, facilitating workshops, curating exhibitions, designing courses, interventions and research projects around mental health.
In 2021-22, she received an Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice grant for a project exploring the link between archiving, collecting and her drawing and sculptural practice. After taking a break to study an MA in Fine Art, she now works with themes of materiality, archives, personal histories and collecting - and as an artist having dealt with chronic illness, research on accessibility and care.
CV
Based in West Yorkshire
b.1984
Exhibitions
2025 'The Weight of it All' Ones to Watch 2025 group show, Sunny Bank Mills, Leeds
2024 ‘Monument (in memory of)’ 'To Hold Your Pain' Northern Connections group show, 9A Project space, Todmorden
2024 ‘The Organised body’ Hanover Building, Preston
2024 ‘The Weight of it all’ Group Show, The Birley, Preston
2023 ‘Permission to Breathe’ What? How? Why? group show with Bert (Karen Bertonasci), PR1 Gallery, Preston
2023 ‘Everything I Didn't Want' The Cutting Room Exhibition, Leeds Art University
2022 'Holding Pattern' exhibition, Imaginary Wines
2020 'Anything could come out of that egg!' Postcards from the Futuro group show, Todmorden TIC
2020 'Something is always far away' 'All True Histories' 'The Sea was my Delight' The Anne Bronte Exhibition, South Square, Thornton
2019 Todmorden artists group show, 9A Gallery
2019 Co-curator, Your Truth is not My Truth, Pool Arts Exhibition, The Horsfall Manchester
2019 Co-curator, Resilience, Pool Arts exhibition, Manchester
2018 'Good Luck Charm' included in The Art Of Magic group show in The Horse Hospital, London, Robinwood Mill, Todmorden and Analogue Farm, Rossendale
2018 Co-curator, R H Y T H M: the work of Akinyemi Oludele, The Horsfall, Manchester
2018 Curator, Three Chord Zen, Lee Hadfield exhibition, Cass Arts, Manchester
2018 'The Earth Runs Red' included in group show 'Diptych, Triptych and Polyptych' at PS Mirabel, Manchester
2016 'The Chaos before the Reforming' Islington Mill Art Academy, Islington Mill (BA equivalent degree show)
2016 'The Earth Runs Red' Doremifasolasido Artist group show
2016 'A Different Kind of Map' window exhibition, Nexus, Manchester
2015 Free for Arts Festival (FFA) group show : Manchester Craft and Design Centre
2015 Islington Mill Art Academy residency show
Residencies, awards, commissions and workshops
2021/22 Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice grant
2017 'Painting the Town' Manchester Histories animation workshops
2016 ‘Doremifasolasido’ Residency, Florence Arts Centre, Cumbria - (Islington Mill representitive)
2015 Islington Mill Art Academy residency: Regents Trading Estate
Talks and workshops
2014-2017 Art for Wellbeing workshops - various
2012 Liverpool Biennial weekend: The Mobile Art School talk representing Islington Mill Art Academy
Writing and publications
2016 'The Earth Runs Red' Doremifasolasido Artist publication
2016 'One Day' Islington Mill Art Academy publication
2016 'A Different Kind of Map: Imprint of a trading estate. Published in Stepz II: Between the Rollerama and The Junkyard
Education
2022 - 2024 MA Fine Art, UCLAN (Distinction)
2017 Screen Printing course at The Egg Factory, Hebden Bridge
2012 - 2016 Self- directed education at Islington Mill Art Academy (BA Equivalent)
2011 The Complete Bookbinder – Hotbed press course
2002 - 2005 Photography with Audio Visual Media BA Hons, UCLAN (2:1)
Click here for my facilitation/ community work CV and employment history