On her materials
Materiality is neither object nor idea, but somewhere in between, seeping into and out of everything. It oozes with references, sticky and tricky to define, straight out of a citrus-scented freshener or all-you-can-eat buffet: wet-wiped; pebble dashed, portable blended.
On what makes her feel her SUPERSELF
MeTime and TimeOut. [The titles of Elise’s sculptures]
On the inspirations behind her SUPERSELF sculptures
Processed materials slither along a sinewy conveyor belt of ideas. They bend, bulge, bubble up. A body is splayed, spread out like landscape, pressed against glass. A drip drops, sticks to the floor. Body parts are also heaped spoons of processed sugar, encoded as iCal entries of events never attended at places never visited. But an image search reveals a generic urban scene, smiling faces, a screenshot of a perfect sandwich discarded in junk mail.
Here’s the thing, the fibreglass stench of lost referents while waiting for a delivery distracts from the time it takes to place the order. A deliberate deflection. Archaeologists found the empty wrappers from your latest meal deal embedded among fossils, pulpy, porous, and ossified. Shrink-wrapped and shiny, the body’s absent steel armature glimmers beneath fragile plaster skin.