ELIZABETH RILEY

THE ARTIST IN HER OWN WORDS

Over the last 15 years my work has addressed questions concerning the complex and changing world we inhabit and our “mixed reality,” living between physical and digital/virtual contexts; are we our everyday, familiar, material past, or our digital future, and is this apparent “mixed reality” of the moment to be embraced or resisted. Is the digital present the bells and whistles of an unchanged and familiar humanity, or does it define us and the future.

I term my work experimental, and over time this 15 year project has been embodied in wall works, installations and tabletop cityscapes, including video, and video stills inkjet-printed on paper and fabric, along with other diverse materials.

My primary working materials, video and video stills, are from the same source but utilized in immaterial and material forms. Video is light and motion, while the video stills are a material expression of the live videos. During the pandemic, I began collaging two dimensional wall works from torn and shaped video stills. The “Untitled Orange-Yellow Series,” utilizes video stills exported from my short video, “The Life of a City (Extended Version). I term these collaged works “material videos.”

In the development of my art my drive has been in looking through the video media shapes and structures I’ve made, toward forming an embodiment of the present and the future. A propelling motive in my work history and process has been in reaching beyond the limited roles provided for women and enforced by the social standards that I encountered as a young woman and young artist. Another major influence on my art has been the raw and nurturing influence of the urban environment that’s been my home as an adult, and speaks to me continually about the future, and our direction as a society.