Axis Venice Biennale Fellow 2026

Lisa Risbec makes spaces with sound and objects spilling out. Using found, collected and crafted objects - combining text, sound and moving image to tell a story.

She 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 and researcher. 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. 

Axis: What inspired you to apply to become a Venice Fellow?

Lisa: I have been lucky enough to go to Venice before for the Biennale and as well as Venice being an amazing, unique place, I just love how the city is filled with art. I went back to university (UCLAN now University of Lancashire) as a mature student and finished at the end of 2024. When I heard it was Lubaina Himid who was representing Britain at the British Pavillion I was so excited, especially with the Preston connection, it’s such a seminal moment and I really wanted to go and see it. Then I saw this opportunity through Axis and thought it was too good to be true, a chance to spend a whole month with the artwork and be working in the British Pavillion and to get to meet other fellows and live in Venice for a month too!

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Axis: What dates will you be going?

Lisa: I’m going mid September to mid October, which seems like a great time at the start of autumn, and also gives me a bit of time to learn a bit of Italian!

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Axis: How is the British Council induction programme going? What will it entail?

Lisa: The induction is going well so far, it’s been lovely to see all of the other fellows and they’ve put a lot of effort into facilitating the sessions so that we all feel comfortable and have a chance to meet each other. I really got a sense that we’re all in it together, and everyone seems really interesting. Each week I leave feeling inspired and excited and I’m really looking forward to finding out a bit more about Lubaina’s exhibition soon too!

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Axis: Have you met the other fellows in your cohort?

Lisa: I had the chance to meet some of the fellows in my cohort, and I think as the weeks go on I’ll get to meet them all. Over Zoom of course, but I do live fairly near to a few so hopefully we’ll have the chance to meet in person before we go.

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Axis: What are you most excited about doing when you first get to Venice?

Lisa: I’m kind of the most excited about just going for a wander when I get there and taking it all in, and then the next day going to the Giardini and seeing the exhibition for the first time will be amazing! One of the main things I’m excited for is just being able to experience the art for a whole month, and to really get to know the exhibitions. There’s so much to engage with and this will be a chance to really get to know all the work. 

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Axis: Do you think you might face any challenges as a fellow and as an exhibition ambassador in the British Pavilion?

Lisa: I have previously had fluctuating energy through chronic illness, only a few years ago I thought I would never be able to do something like this. These days it’s well managed and the British council has been great about understanding needs and really upfront about access, so it’s really nice to know that I’ll be supported while I’m there. 

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Axis: Could you tell us a little bit about your proposed project and how it fits into your current practice?

Lisa: My work focuses on fragments, memory, objects and incidental archives. I'm interested in the things we keep and how they’re connected to our memories and emotions. I am currently exploring gesture through new work and my proposed project for Venice will expand my research into the gestures that hold emotion and explore sensory and material ways of exploring place.

I’m drawn to Venice for its atmosphere and its sense of in-between-ness. It feels like a city of thresholds and memory and during the residency, I want to collect observations, fragments of writing, sound and images, make small interventions, arranging, wrapping, collecting sounds and fragments as ways of listening to the city’s atmosphere. I hope that shared conversations with other Fellows and Biennale visitors will contribute to this too. I’ll also be writing to help to connect and make sense of these fragments.

Also during my research on gesture I came across artist Ketty La Roca who featured in the 1972 Biennale. I plan to visit the Archive of the Biennale and hope to find some documentation of her performance. Alongside my creative practice I work as an Imaging Coordinator at an archive, so I’m also interested in how we digitise and represent objects, and I want to visit the ARCHiVe Digital centre in Venice to find out about the historical digitisation work they do.

I’m also really interested in atmosphere and care in installation spaces and through my time at the British Pavilion I want to observe how emotion, intimacy and care are communicated through curatorial choices, particularly in response to Koyo Kouoh’s In Minor Keys theme and Lubaina Himid’s work. I think that immersing myself within the artwork and installations will broaden the possibilities of how I think about art and what it can offer us as visitors.

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