Work by North Wales–based artist Elizabeth Benson, will travel from its original installation on the Aberlleiniog Sculpture Trail on Anglesey to Art Works East in Leyton, where it will be exhibited from Thursday, 25th June to Tuesday, 23rd July
This summer, Brethyn yn Cofnodi / Cloth Recording, a site-rooted sculptural work by North Wales–based artist Elizabeth Benson, will travel from its original installation on the Aberlleiniog Sculpture Trail on Anglesey to Art Works East in Leyton, where it will be exhibited from Thursday, 25th June to Tuesday, 23rd July.
Developed directly from the materials and forces of the Aberlleiniog landscape, Brethyn yn Cofnodi records place through ecological colour, pressure, and transformation.
The work was created using alder cones, bracken, seawater, and rusted metal gathered from the shoreline and woodland surrounding the site. These materials were not used illustratively but chemically and physically, allowing the cloth to absorb, corrode, stain, and imprint the landscape’s own actions.
Rather than treating cloth as a passive surface, Benson approaches it as a membrane, a responsive material capable of holding pressure events, environmental traces, and the slow accumulation of place.
The resulting work sits within her broader sculptural practice, which “explores ecological palettes, embedded natural objects, and anatomical stacking as a way of making the invisible forces of landscape visible”.
The exhibition at Art Works East follows Benson’s recent participation in London Craft Week with Blackdot Gallery, an event that attracted significant attention for its focus on innovative material practices and biofabrication‑adjacent approaches.
Her practice, rooted in North Wales, is shaped by daily engagement with weather, plant life, and the geological pressures of the landscape.
Speaking about her work, Benson said: “My work begins with the materials that shape a place—its plants, its metals, its water, its weather. Cloth becomes a recording surface, not for images but for forces. In Aberlleiniog, the alder, bracken, seawater and rust did the marking. I simply created the conditions for the landscape to speak.”
Find out more about Elizabeth’s work here
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