Artist CV
Artist Statement
I am an award-winning trans-disciplinary performance maker and artist.
I create audiovisual art, performances and soundscapes to engage, inspire and mesmerise audiences. My practice is moved by feelings of “otherness” offered through the prism of ritual and magic. Using repetitive and rhythmic gestures (“stimming”), my autistic/ADHD/synaesthesia filter explores texture, voice, recorded media and live performance. Autism exists in my work intentionally, without being overtly placed at its centre. My work has a phantasmagorical feel, overwhelming and immersive, secretive, yet particularly revealing to diverse audiences. It has been compared to a Leonora Carrington psychological landscape - at one level displaying a consciousness echoing an ancient sensibility, at another expressing something intensely contemporary.
I regularly collaborate with other Neurodivergent creatives to develop new ways of working, experimenting with sound and video, asking questions where multimedia/technology, nature and live performance meet.
In 2019, I founded Magical Women, a Neurodivergent-led model where autistic/ADHD women and non-binary artists gather in relaxed and empowering spaces to make art, removing the risk present in neurotypical situations.
Key Recent Projects
Biodivergent Sites & Sounds (2023; lead artist) - an autistic led immersive and accessible interactive experience for audiences to experience nature and engage in the preservation of Harlesden Canal, funded by Arts Council England. Working with the Canal & River Trust I worked with members of the local community (including a local primary school) to create soundscape trails around the canal to encourage interaction digitally and physically and community led narratives. https://elinorrowlands.github.io/bss/index.html
Beyond Borders / Beyond Barriers (2023) - I was one of six artists to collaborate with pianist Siwan Rhys, composing Secrets in the Centrefold, a brand new piece of music for a unique concert celebrating UK Disabled composers, at the Dora Stoutzker Hall in Cardiff.
https://drakemusicscotland.org/beyond-borders-beyond-barriers/
The Deepenings (2022/23; collaborative artist) - a collaboration with artists Gemma Garwood, Bethan Briggs-Miller and the community on Mersea Island, Essex to read and retell the landscape. I worked with participants to create soundscapes inspired by the locality - psychological landscapes bursting with collected memories, hidden words, found artefacts and whispered verse.
https://www.thedeepeningsproject.com/
Grants, Bursaries & Residencies
2023 ACE Project Grant - Biodivergent Sites & Sounds
2022 The Supporting Act Foundation Community Grant - Magical Women
https://www.elinorrowlands.com/projects
A-N Bursary - Time Space Money
2021 Disability Arts Online commission - Painting Poetry, physicalising the art-making process
2020 ACE Project Grant - showcase and create art with ND (autistic/ADHD) women artists
Drake Music - Artist-in-Residence (March - Dec 2020)
Unlimited, Shape Arts Micro Grant
2017/18 Heart of Glass Bursary
Exhibitions, Awards & Selections
2023 Cole’s Gallery, Leeds - solo exhibition “Scatterings of Light”
Kentish Town Health Centre - solo exhibition (Creative Health Camden)
2021 CornerHOUSE Arts Centre Surbiton - solo exhibition “The Magician”
2020 Fulham Library - group exhibition
Squares Part 2, Shipton Street Gallery, Shoreditch, London
LATENT - Selected art was part of a collection (2020- 2023)
2019
Pop Up Gallery, Ad Lib, Fulham Road, London, UK. Curator: Dylan Roberts Solo Exhibition,
EU Communities, European Investment Bank, Luxembourg
Outside In exhibition, judged by Grayson Perry RA. Gallery Piano Noble, London Contested Spaces,
A Place for Change, The Foundry, London (DAO Showcase)
In The Forest video installation for Group Exhibition, Minories Galleries, Colchester
2018
At the Window (video art), Shape Open showcase at Hoxton Arches
Like Breath Not Breathing (film), Women SRSLY, The Yard Theatre, London
At the Window (film), Shape Open, Art Pavilion, Whitechapel Gallery, London
The Girl, poetry performance (reading), Group Poetry/Fiction Reading, Tate Modern Shape Arts Showcase, Retrospective, Hoxton Arches, London
2017
Tate Modern x Shape Arts Performance writing
1st Prize winner, ello x Wetransfer Art Competition “Flow"
Performances (including Festivals)
2023
Beyond Borders / Beyond Barriers, Dora Stoutzker Hall, Cardiff
2021
To Exist Beyond the Glass, Hammersmith Lyric Theatre
2020
Magical Journeys - Live Storytelling and Soundscapes to Jo-anne Cox’s live cello music
2019
Two Million More, Curated/Directed by Kathryn Stamp, Wandsworth Fringe
Outside, My Hands are Clapping, Live Art Solo Performance, H&F Arts Festival, produced by Turtle Key Arts, Hammersmith Lyric, London
Into the Forest poetry performance, The Unfamiliars, Minories Galleries, Colchester
Painted Conversations, Live Art durational performance, Yard Theatre
2018
Do We Seem Different When We Drown?, scratch performance, Battersea Arts Centre
Way to the Pretty (writer/director, performance poet), Calm Down Dear, Feminist Festival, Camden People's Theatre, London