NORTH WEST DRAWING COLLECTIVE
Lisa Risbec
Biography
Lisa Risbec is a visual artist, based just outside of Manchester, with a background in photography and animation. Recent exhibitions include The Anne Bronte exhibition; South Square and Postcards from the Futuro; Todmorden TIC. She is also an arts facilitator, curator and researcher, having facilitated workshops and designed courses and interventions in art and mental health over the past 10 years.
Artist Statement
My current work sits within the intersection of contemporary drawing, sculpture and research-based practice and is focused on collecting, documenting, and making objects.
With a strong sense of line and form, I use photography, collage, assemblage, embroidery, and sculpture to explore the way things are put together, the objects we keep and discard, and the visual memory of a place. I am drawn to shapes, lines and angles in the built environment. I find calm in arranging, collating and documenting. I notice the temporary and collect and arrange traces of history. Sometimes I work in close detail, a composition or found arrangement in the street. Sometimes with a wider viewpoint, a landscape or expanse of sky and I find beauty in unintended arrangements, found drawings or seemingly random and purely functional choices. I like the way that the natural world is organised and the way that humans can create beauty without realising.
I often explore the topography of a place or the materiality of a collection and attempt to re-tell its recent history through a study of form, line and colour. Sometimes through static sculptural forms, other times through moving image, paper-based work or the written word, always preferring to work quickly and intuitively and using creative writing to process my feelings and wider themes around the work.
