By Karina Devine
Elise Heather is a Toowoomba-based mixed media and textile artist who creates her pieces out of her home studio in Toowoomba.
Her works are inspired by nature, the unseen and forgotten and her experiences with ASD (as a neurodivergent person and parent to one).
Although being autistic is not all Elise is, it does define a large part of how she interacts and interprets with the world as well as parts of her artistic process.
Warwick Art Gallery is pleased to showcase Elise’s work in the Grove Gallery exhibition titled “Do I Make You Uncomfortable”.
The work and the title of the exhibition are a statement on how society perceives the behaviours of the neurodivergent by creating feelings of discomfort and misapprehension when viewing a collection of insects and creatures. Through her own personal experiences of being neurodivergent she presents commonly ostracised creatures and generates an environment that addresses the stigma surrounding ASD and ADHD.
This clever body of work explores how the behaviours of the neurodivergent can be perceived as strange and can generate a feeling of discomfort for the neurotypical person and vice versa. To allow neurotypical people to experience the feelings an odd bug can produce and draw parallels between their experience and their feelings towards neurodivergent people.
Elise is a self-taught artist who, over the past 10 years, has developed her own techniques of mixing second hand fibres and fabric with other materials to create one of a kind sculptural pieces.
Elise is drawn to the details in things, not just the overall. Seeing the little hairs on a spider’s legs or the shimmer of a wing. Finding those details beautiful and interesting. Her techniques have been honed through years of play and multiple different crafts including embroidery, sewing, sculpting, paper mache and painting.
Children love seeing and “feeling scared” by the creatures Elise has made, making it a perfect outing for the school holidays.
Do I Make You Uncomfortable will be at Warwick Art Gallery through to 13 July.
