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Lisa Risbec

Todmorden
I make spaces with sound and objects spilling out. Using found, collected and crafted objects - combining text, sound and moving image to tell a story. I also work in an archive and have a background in creative facilitation, photography and film.
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I begin 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 feels temporal and 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.

 

The single egg (everything is broken)

The Organised Body

Monument (in memory of)

The Weight of it All

Everything I Didn't Want

Featured in

Curated

Remembering Right Now

By Charlotte Grayland
Interview

In conversation with Lisa Risbec, Axis Venice Biennale Fellow 2026

By Emma Copley

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