Artist Statement and Bio

Elise Cakebread is an artist whose work holds the interplay of history, materiality, and feminism at its centre.

Working across textiles, sculpture, installation, and public art, Elise transforms post-consumer textile waste and discarded materials into intricate works that explore domesticity, disposability, resilience, and transformation. Knitted, woven, embroidered, and spun from the detritus of the 21st century—garments, yarn, wire, fibres, ribbon, and packaging—her pieces transcend their everyday origins. Driven by experimentation within traditional textile processes and techniques, her practice engages with materiality, sustainability, matrilineal craft traditions, and feminist narratives. Each work is meticulously deconstructed and reimagined, undergoing cycles of making, unmaking, and reassembly that forge a distinctive material vernacular. Waste from one piece often becomes the foundation of the next, creating an ongoing cycle of renewal.

Elise’s recent works have investigated Ballarat's dual legacy as the site of the Eureka Stockade—Australia’s birthplace of democracy—and a city grappling with one of the nation’s highest rates of gender-based violence. By reimagining emergent local symbols and reclaiming the untold stories of women in the Goldfields, Elise crafts a compelling investigation into contemporary narratives of justice.

Elise has collaborated with The Artling, Gorman, Dulux, Bar Studio, alt.material, Local/Actual, The Monoglo Group, SPACE Furniture, and Capella Sydney. She has exhibited at Linden New Art Project Space, CRAFT Victoria, the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Design Tasmania, and Australian Design Centre. Her work has been recognised through selection as a finalist in the Northern Beaches Environmental Art Award and the KAAF Art Award.

Elise holds a Bachelor of Arts (Textiles) with distinction from RMIT (2012) and a Bachelor of Creative Arts from the University of Melbourne (2007). In 2022, she was awarded the Regional Arts Victoria Creative Fellowship. Elise is currently undertaking a Master of Arts at Federation University, Ballarat, examining contemporary narratives of feminism and resistance within the Goldfields region.


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