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Open Studio, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2022

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Open Studio: Elizabeth Willing

Queensland Art Gallery, As part of the ‘Open Studio’ series, this exhibition offers insights into the creative process and studio practice of contemporary Australian Artists.

15 Oct 2022 – 12 Feb 2023

Curated by Terry Dean and Samatha Littley

‘Open Studio: Elizabeth Willing’ presents a snapshot of the studio process, exhibiting some of the systems and tools necessary for the artists day-to-day making. The space offers a portrait of contemporary art making, including samples of research, prototyping, making, molding, and storage.

‘My studio process requires physical spaces to test out new work, often these spaces are flexible, meaning [my] living space needs to fluctuate to accommodate the scale of different projects… [They are] often created in concise bursts, installed and deinstalled within a week, or rolled up/rolled out again each day.’

Within this installation there is a tangible conflation of materials, processes, and research into the performance of eating. The resulting installation is a platform to consider how the creative process might mirror the rhizomic and messy nature of digestion.

-       Terry Dean

This project was supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland

Open Studio: Elizabeth Willing. 2022. Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Joe Ruckli.
The Shelves. 2022. Customised proprietary shelving. Studio tools and stored artworks. Shelves filled with various tools, objects, moulds, tests, and artworks taken out of storage encircle the studio platform, replicating the usual claustrophobic state of the artist’s working space.  Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Joe Ruckli.
The Shelves. 2022. Customised proprietary shelving. Studio tools and stored artworks. The variety of tools included represent one and many practices that Elizabeth Willing employs all at once. Tools for woodworking, moulding and casting, ceramics, painting, cake decorating, sewing or collage sit amongst a myriad of objects that are situated along a continuum of process. Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Joe Ruckli.
The Platform. 2022. Elevated working stage. As an iterative series of artistic experiments in a public space, the platform is an invitation to share in a modest creative gesture of printmaking on linen with the humble markings of kipfler potatoes. Draped within a display, the linen can be viewed as an unfinished work that remains on display on the central platform awaiting the artist’s return to a temporary studio. Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Joe Ruckli.
Studio processes. 2022. High definition video. Filmed in the artist’s studio. Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Chloe Callistemon.
Counterwork (prototype no.1 and 2). 2022. Timber, paint and vinyl sticker. 180 x 180 x 70cm. The table sculptures featured in the Artist Studio function either as autonomous artworks or as sites for audience engagement. Decorated with motifs that evoke both the butter icing piped onto children’s birthday cakes and the human digestive tract, the tables will be hung flat against the wall of the space in their disassembled form, and set up to allow Willing to hold workshops. Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Joe Ruckli.
Counterwork (prototype no.1 and 2). 2022. Timber, paint and vinyl sticker. 180 x 180 x 70cm. Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Chloe Callistemon.
Open Studio. 2022. Timeline of table development/process. Vinyl. Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Joe Ruckli.
Open Studio. 2022. Mindmap of creative process/ research. Pen on wall. Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Joe Ruckli.
Open Studio: Elizabeth Willing. 2022. Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Joe Ruckli.
The Platform, Kipfler potato printing, acrylic on linen. Produced while onsite. Image courtesy of QAGOMA, Photography by Joe Ruckli.