Meet the artist who combines live performance with print to express ecological concerns
Elizabeth Tomos is an artist, arts educator and climate activist. Based in Kingsthorpe, she is a Fine Art Senior Lecturer at Falmouth university and lead artist on the Northamptonshire Creative Climate Action Fund.
She recently performed the first in a trio of live Perform//Print showcases in Northamptonshire, aiming to raise awareness and spark dialogue around pressing ecological concerns. The performance took place at the Umbrella Pavilion, Racecourse last week, where the audience witnessed Elizabeth using a fully functional vertical screen printing press to produce live prints and interact with the press as part of an engaging visual performance.
I caught up with Elizabeth at the Umbrella Pavilion, to learn more about her work and the messages she hopes to convey through her art.
Can you tell our readers more about your unique blend of art and ecological activism.
This journey started 10 years ago. I’ve been a performance artist and an animal activist since my teens but with the increasing awareness around the climate crisis, I became more passionate about using printmaking as a form of protest against environmental destruction. As an artist, I was looking at ways to bring printing equipment out of the studios into community spaces.
This performance is a realization of that dream.
Can you give a preview into the unique hybrid performance?
I have a fully functioning, vertical screen printing press which is used during the performances. This metal machine has fabric loops running through it and over the course of the hour-long performance, various botanical images, flowers, spores, mushrooms, spore prints and tendril-like shapes – emerge onto the prints.
The screen is made of fabric, and any blocked areas prevent the ink from passing through. You can create stencils, much like a graffiti artist, or use objects. I use materials like raffia, which looks like roots or tendrils. I also incorporate parts of my body into the prints, so at times, it’s almost like printing an extension of myself onto the fabric.
This particular performance piece is deeply rooted in my Welsh ancestry which holds a unique understanding of the interconnectedness between land and humans.
Welsh mythology suggests that if you disconnect humans from the land they belong to, there’s an inevitable sense of loss or grief. This piece explores that theme.
During the performance, I position myself under the machine, almost like it’s my house—a snail carrying its home. At times, I ride it as if it’s a horse, becoming entangled with the prints.
The idea is to symbolize a reconnection with the land, with the machine representing the industrial revolution that severed this bond.
Is this the first time you’ve created this piece of performance art?
I initially built a prototype—a wooden version—which unfortunately didn’t survive a climate change protest in 2019.
The prototype printing press was last seen being loaded into a police van – police literally stopped the press.
However, the incident made me realize how much people were drawn to the work and the performance. This new performance, funded by the Northamptonshire Community Foundation Arts Council is hosted by Sol Haven, a Northampton well-being organisation.
Where did your interest in art activism originate?
I’m actually a bit of a nomad. My ancestry is Welsh yet my father’s job took my family literally all around the world.
I’m 37 and have lived at 34 addresses across 2 continents and 6 different countries.
I wonder if this movement has contributed to my own struggle with the climate change narrative. I have belonged to lots of places and nowhere at the same time.
Being rooted in a place and a time – that is something I wanted but didn’t necessarily have.
The theme of home is prevalent in my work – what do we even mean by home?
Sometimes in this performance, the machine is my home and it migrates and moves with me. It’s an undertone in my work – a battle of what does it mean to belong, particularly in terms of location.
As a teenager, I became involved in politics, particularly around animal rights during the end of the hunting ban. Growing up in a very rural community, I witnessed firsthand the impact of animal hunts and testing, which fuelled my interest in activism. Over time, my focus expanded to include broader social issues. More recently, I began working with organisations such as Extinction Rebellion, a global movement set up to compel government action and to raise awareness about climate issues. The climate crisis has gained much more visibility in the media, and we are now drilling down into specific causes of the crisis. With my background in animal rights, I am involved in projects to do with wildlife conservation.
Does Northampton have any particular issues of ecological concern?
This performance is part of a project by the Northamptonshire Creative Climate Action Fund, in which we aim to explore how art can engage people with the ecological crisis. As the lead artist on this project, I also spearheaded a series of workshops where participants experimented with various printing techniques.
One workshop focused on the great crested newt, a species that had been very dominant in the Midlands area particularly Northamptonshire, yet it’s existence came under threat. The reptile has been a key subject of our conservation efforts since 2021 and our initiatives are proving successful with newts beginning to return – a positive sign for local biodiversity. Being a wetlands area, many conservation projects are emerging focusing on the conversation of wildlife.
Today there is a campaign by the Umbrella Fair Organisation addressing air pollution in Northamptonshire which is among the worst in the country. The ‘1000 voices clean air campaign’ is part of this effort, is a project set up to gather 1000 people’s voices from Northamptonshire to urge the government to take serious action on air quality.
On a broader level, as humans we are apex predators, deeply connected with the ecological system.
We have an eco system out of balance. Everything needs to be in its right place and if its out of place, something somewhere in the system collapses. Its about understanding ourselves as an animal and how we are connected to a much bigger ecosystem. We are essentially out of alignment with our rightful place in the ecosystem and we are not relating to animals in the system in a way that ensures mutual thriving.
For example, we are destroying habitat at such a rate we have animals becoming extinct almost on a daily basis. There are pesticides we are using that are killing our pollinators.
Another problem is how much we are shipping food globally. We are losing our self-sustained, nurturing local environments in our current global economic systems. Because we have become more and more delocalized we have lost those critical systems for helping and supporting each other.
Organizations like the Umbrella Fair and Sol Haven play a crucial role in revitalizing our sense of community. But how can we build systems that work for us rather than against us?
It’s a two-pronged approach: first, to put pressure on the government to take responsibility for what it can control and second, to empower communities to reclaim control over things they can be in control of.
How do you express your ecologocial concerns through art?
I use the term Perform//Print but more than anything I create happenings or events – real-time experiences that people witness and later reflect upon. I want to create aesthetic experiences that people can respond to emotionally in different ways. I try and layer my work to create different points of access – people can come away and feel something completely different.
In this particular piece, people are responding in a couple of different ways. Many are drawn to the botanical imagery that emerges; they find it beautiful and soothing.
Others are more captivated by what is happening to my body during the performance. As the ink begins to cover me, I become an integral part of the piece. People respond to this interconnectedness.
What is your background in art?
My initial degree was with Wimbledon College of Arts in London. I did my MA at the University of Northampton and I am close to finishing a PhD; ‘how can performance print be used to talk about climate change?’ with Edinburgh College of Art.
Elizabeth Tomos will be performing her live Perform//Print showcase on Saturday 22 June at Delapre Abbey Walled Gardens and at Hideaway Wood Farm on Saturday 29th June in Dodford. For tickets to both remaining performances visit:
http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/in-contact
For information visit the facebook page or instagram link.