Visual Art Practice
Elspeth Walker (b.1997, Warrington) is a visual artist and writer, whose work offers an alternative archive as a way to examine class, feminism, memory and spatial understanding. With an MA in Writing from the Royal College of Art, London, her work examines materiality and experimental modes of writing, alongside art focused articles. Her drawing practice comes from her writing experiments, and offers a new visual language where words are not sufficient.
Exploring how archives are often rigid structures, mostly for the middle to upper classes, Walker’s visual art practice uses memory through psychogeography and abstract methods to create bodies of work that propose a new way to archive the self, family and social history. Her two main bodies of work: Memory Mapping and Lineage of Threads, exemplify this, with one recalling space from memory, and the other offering a reconciliation of a maternal heritage of craft.
Using oil sticks, pastels and acrylic paint on various materials, Walker also creates symbols for negotiating emotional states, again asserting something temporal and personal as valid for the archive, influenced by surrealism and other artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Agnes Martin.
Memory Mapping
Memory Mapping is a body of work that I have been creating since 2024, inspired by drawing workshops at my residency with Descover Artists in September 2023. These works are pieces that translate a geographical space into a visual image that stands as a record for the emotional memory associated. The use of colours is often intentional, reflecting the interconnection and atmosphere of the moment. Although externally these images can take an abstract form, the process of recreating through my drawing method asserts the abstract (such as memory) as something tangible, able to be recorded and not dismissed due to scientific or social constraints. Using psychogeographical and symbolic methods these works reconstruct the personal into a shareable object.
These works form part of my wider artistic exploration and mission to place the personal of the working class into an alternate archive that highlights how often the everyday movements of people within a society are left out of history, and how personal experience qualifies as data for an archive. A form of recording often dismissed.
More images and prices can be supplied on request.
Images left to right, top to bottom: Follow me follow the moss, then bring us back on track, 2024 , Trying to get home, 2025 , A kind of home : Roots , 2025 , The mountain can have my knees, 2024, Walking to the lake, 2025, Crack open the hillside, let the gorge spill, 2024 , Ash & Gold, Chios Roads (i,ii,iii), 2025, Cosmic staircase, 2024, Learning to tread water (i, ii, iii), 2024/5.
Lineage of Thread
My on-going project Lineage of Threads, is a body of work looking at how my maternal heritage is one of traditional crafts and threads. Through this work I explore how I can continue this tradition in my visual work, unable to replicate the skills of a maternal matriarchal family. The works are born of geometric spontaneity, acting as dialogues to my maternal family, creating connections through the language of sewing. These works draw on the textures, lines and shapes of the raw materials to abstract them into a communicative piece both honouring and archiving working class heritage.
Emotions in an Archive
These works fragment off from my Memory Mapping work to explore emotional pathways and how feelings, relationships and memory can compound physically, creating a visual externalisation of something often considered untransferable.
Alternative Archives - Previous Works
My visual art career started in 2021 after joining the Liquid Gold Collective situated in Holborn. Since then I have explored and pushed the boundaries of what my art practice could be. Explore works that came together to refine my current practice - from these beginnings of sculpture, installation and performance to the drawing of today.
Analogue Memories, Photo series and Installation, 2023-24, Exploring how communication can transcend death through objects and images.
Alphabetti Alice Falls in Love, sculpture, 2023. This work is a playful sculpture made for Let Them Eat Fake, Bad Art Soho.
The Body is an Archive, 2022-23, Sculptural installation examining bodily archives and temporal storage.
You Do So Much , photo-performance in collaboration with Yasmeen Melius, 2022. These photos are to highlight the contrast between wanting to do a lot and having to depending on social economic standings.
Persephone’s Bedroom, Photo series and installation, 2022-23, This work creates a vigil for memory lost after being spiked with drugs, and how this narrative is both modern and ancient for many.
Aphrodisiac Plates, Sculpture, 2022. These works featured in RCA Pure Class combine my writing work with sculpture to create satirical plates.
Exhibitions
All I have is False Memory, Filet Space, London [May 2025]
Featuring Follow me, follow the moss and bring us back on track, oil stick on canvas [2024]
Pollen People, the Ecosystem of Community, oil stick on canvas [2025]
Strands, Painting Progress, London [May 2025]
Featuring Over the tops: Our Family Walk, oil stick on canvas, [2024]
Open Exhibition, Southwark Park gallery, London [November 2024]
Featuring Weaving a wave, acrylic on paper [2024]
Rip open the Mountain and let the Gorge Spill, oil stick on canvas [2024]
Lovers Churchyard, Jazzlive at the Crypt, London [August 2024]
Featuring Cosmic Staircase, oil stick on canvas [2024]
We Are Family, ESPS, St Leonards by Sea [August 2024]
Featuring Analogue Memory, a photography and installation work [2023-24]
Otherwise Implied, Take Courage Gallery, London [February 2024]
Featuring a photo series and zine project curated by myself [2023-34]
Let them eat fake, Bad Art Presents, Soho, London [November 2023]
Alphabetti Alice Falls in Love, Sculpture [2023]
It all Starts with a Thread, Whitechapel Gallery, London [August-December 2023]
Featuring Threads of Us zine [2023]
A New Wave, Spitalfields Studio, London [July - October 2023]
Featuring Persephone’s Bedroom, a photo and sculptural installation, [2023]
Textus, Torriano Meeting House, London [July- August 2023]
Featuring Threads of Us zine [2023]
Borrowing Tomorrow’s Happiness, Take Courage Gallery, London [August 2023]
Commissioned reading of Pub Girl
The Body is an Archive, Liquid Gold Studios [March 2023]
Featuring The Body is an Archive – part 2 [2023]
Omitted References, Mile End Pavilion [August 2022]
Featuring sculpture If I were a seahorse [2022]
Pure Class, RCA Working Class Creatives, St Johns, Bethnal Green [August 2022]
Featuring the performance/photography work You Do So Much in collaboration with Yasmeen Melius [2022] and Aphrodisiacs a series of plates with hand drawings [2022]
Custard Cowboy : A Group Show, Liquid Gold Studio, Holborn [May 2022]
Featuring sculpture If I were a seahorse [2022]
Cartography -Solo Show, Liquid Gold Studio, Holborn [April 2022]
Poetry across map lines installation piece. [2021-22]
Residencies
Descover Artists, Eona, Chios, Greece [July 2025]
Descover Artists, Hydra, Greece [September 2023]
21 Days, 42 Artists, Earls Court Development, London [January 2023]
Cornwall Zine Library, Fish Factory, Falmouth, UK [June 2022]