Willing’s creative work is founded on her fascination with foods, their transformation through preparation, and eating as a performative experience. Repeatedly, she uses new ingredients as material for her work, preferring those containing sugars as well as industrial ready-made products: on the one hand, these are very stable in form, while as organic materials, they continually change their smell or taste. One particular focus in Willing’s work is on the ‘architectonic’ qualities of sweets, for example the stabilising effect of icing in the production of cakes.
Willing’s works adopt the form of sculptures, collages, installations, performances or also dinner- events. She experiments incessantly with a huge range of possibilities during the processing of her materials, analyzing them sensually and structurally, to assemble them subsequently into new forms with fresh possibilities for use. The artist is less concerned with the aesthetic phenomena accompanying  transformation processes and more with changes that translate foodstuffs like sugar and cheese into a state closer to non-edible materials such as plastic or cement.
In the exhibition Shades of Yellow Willing is showing a selection of new works created during her residency, and combining materials such as ice konfect chocolates, milk chocolate powder, liqueurs and treacle, but also cheese.

Elizabeth Willing lives and works in Brisbane. She is currently a grantee of the Australia Council for the Arts in the context of our International Studio Programme.