elliedoney @ gmail.com
I am an artist, hands-on research facilitator, and materials enthusiast.
Through a practice of making, cooking, and eating with people, often in community or learning environments, I make sensory investigations into human-material ecologies, to encourage and explore embodied knowledge about materials and our changing relationships.
My work observes and imagines the changing internal and external forms and properties of matter, and the relationships we have with materials, mediated by our senses.
Whether ephemeral, industrial or domestic, the stuff I work with is often gleaned from my surroundings, and specific to a particular place. I set out to look for magic in materials, the extraordinary in the fabric of every day.
Working with food is a way to shape-shift and explore materials in flux. By experiments in cooking and eating together across disciplines, I want to travel the porous borders of material bodies in our environment, and their interrelated physical and emotional properties.
To get involved in and future research, join the Materials Research Kitchen mailing list.
I have just completed a PhD by practice at the Slade School of Fine Art and Institute of Making, UCL with a project titled: entitled Materials Research Kitchen: Making Food Together as Material, Method and Metaphor. I am currently a technician leading the Institute of Making’s new Experimental Kitchen at UCL East.
Studies
2017 – 2024: Practice-led PhD, Slade School of Fine Art/Institute of Making UCL
2008 – 10: Royal College of Art (MA) Ceramics & Glass
1998 – 01: University of Brighton (BA Hons.) Materials (Wood, Metal, Ceramics Plastics)
1997- 98: Middlesex University (Foundation) Art & Design
Residencies
2016/17: Phytology, Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, London
2014: Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL, London
2013: Siobhan Davies Studios – 60I40 Starting Point residency, London
2013: Guldagergård International Ceramic Research Center, Denmark
2012: National Trust: Erno Goldfinger’s home 2 Willow Road / William Morris’ Red House, London
2012: Greenbelt Festival, Cheltenham Racecourse
2010: Headspace, Nara City, Japan
2010: HMG Paint, Manchester
2004: Florence Trust Studios
2002: Eastbourne College
Research
2018-19: Feast Journal: Sugar
2017 ongoing: Food and Transformation, practice-led PhD, UCL/Beko Plc
2010: Liquid Quiddity – The Undercurrents of Matter: MA dissertation
Art Project Managing
2009-11: Wallspace Gallery, artists’ collective company loans
2007-8: Collision Festival, Area 10, Peckham, visual art programmer
2007-9: Canary Wharf Ltd, public art assistant
2007-9: WindowSpace Gallery, Hoxton Hall and Hoxton Works, art programmer
Work exhibited
2018
– The Land We Live In – The Land We Left Behind, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, with Phytology
2016
– Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, AMP Gallery, Peckham London
– Dangerous Diaries: Exploring Risks and Rewards in Fabrication, Octagon Gallery UCL
2015
– Organolepts, Cravings exhibition, Science Museum Late event, London
2014
– Pots and Possibilities, Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL, with Studio Manifold
2013
– Under the Influence – Siobhan Davies Studio, with Studio Manifold
– Unfold – Siobhan Davies Studios, with Studio Manifold
– Excavations – Guldagergård International Ceramic Research Center, Denmark
2012
– This is How To Live, 2 Willow Road and The Red House – Former homes designed and lived in by Erno Goldfinger and William Morris, with Studio Manifold
– Nothing Ever Happens, OSR Projects, East Coker, Somerset.
2011
– Stick Up – a collaboration with Phil Rawle at AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, with Studio Manifold, commissioned by the British Ceramics Biennial,
– Elemental(ism) – silver cloud gallery, London
– The King and The Minotaur, Babel Studios, St Pancras
– London Art Fair Projects with Florence Trust
2010
– Assembly, BEARSPACE, London
– [dAnger!] – Wormwood Gallery, Osaka, Japan
– Calling Upon Spirits – Testbed 1, Battersea, London
– New Designers 2010, London – Shortlisted for New Designer of the Year award
– SHOW ONE MA graduate exhibition – The Henry Moore Gallery, RCA, London
2009
– Einfall: Beyond Spontaneity, at The Freud Museum, London
– Off the Wall 2, The Gallery Room, London Civil Rights & Arts Centre, London
2007
– When Things Come Together, Nowhere North, Barnet, London
– Friendly Fire, Artworks inspired by bad news, at Nancy Victor Gallery, Charlotte St. London
2006
– Solo exhibition, Camden People’s Theatre, London
– Halfway House, an artist-led exhibition, 32 artists in a former bail hostel, Clapham, London
– Pestival, London Wetlands Centre
2005
– Solo exhibition alongside Terror 2005, Union Theatre, London
– Florence Trust, studio residency show, London
– Critical Mass, Area 10 Easter show, Peckham, London
Collections
2012: Crafts Council Handling Collection
2010: Freud Museum
2003: Concrete and felt sculptures to commemorate the opening of the Hayward Gallery’s new foyer, and Dan Graham’s Waterloo Sunset Pavillion
Awards
2017: PhD Studentship BEKO PLC
2011: Artists Access to Art Colleges Award, Plymouth School of Art.
2010: RJ Washington bursary award
2009: Eduardo Paolozzi travel award
2009: House of Fraser scholarship award