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‘Biscuit Tin Nostalgia’: Elize de Beer Solo Exhibition

March 5 - April 18, 2026
Sample-Studios Gallery, The Lord Mayor's Pavilion, Fitzgerald's Park
Funded By
Exhibition Artists
Elize de Beer
Biscuit tin nostalgia

Biscuit Tin Nostalgia is a solo exhibition by visual artist Elize de Beer, presenting a new body of work developed through engagement with the Liam Kennedy photographic archive at UCC Library’s Special Collections and Archives. de Beer offers a glimpse into the recent history lived memory of Cork by exploring an archive which documents the daily life of Corkonians from the 1930s through the 1980s. Much like de Beer’s encounters with an unfamiliar landscape when she first arrived in Cork from South Africa, her engagement with the archive was navigated by seeking and creating connections. de Beer forms a speculative nostalgic connection to the material, reimagining place and history through landscape, photographic fragments, and archival traces across photo etchings, mixed media works, and artist books.

 

Artist Statement.

In de Beer’s expanded print practice, she explores and critically engages with archival materials to examine not only the act of archiving but also how archives shape personal narratives and address broader global concerns such as climate change, immigration, land, and the preservation of knowledge. Working with both photographic and written archival sources, de Beer uses these materials to construct new or alternative narratives, drawing on analogue and digital processes to question how histories are recorded, mediated, and re-imagined.

Through these material and visual investigations, her work challenges the hierarchies and systems embedded within archives, publishing, and library structures, particularly in relation to how knowledge is organized, accessed, and valued. She implements a wide range of printmaking techniques, including acid etchings, photoetching, and screen printing to create editioned prints. She applies those printmaking sensibilities to create sculptural forms in metal and paper, installations, and artist books. Books play a central role in de Beer’s practice. By interrogating their form, materiality, and function she creates traditional publications, zines, artist books, and large-scale immersive book-based sculptures. Across these varied formats she considers the book as both an object and a site where knowledge can be questioned and restructured.

 

Bio.

Elize de Beer is a South African visual artist based in Cork, Ireland and Johannesburg, South Africa, working from her studio at Sample-Studios. Her multidisciplinary practice spans printmaking, books, and sculpture and she is a member of Sample-Studios and Cork Printmakers. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including recent 2024 solo shows: The Books We Haven’t Read, LHQ Gallery, Cork County Library; Orthography In Disregard, QSS Gallery, Belfast, UK; Archived Waterford, Index Gallery, Waterford; and Antarctic Archive, in the Printmakers Studio Gallery, Cork, IE. She is currently working towards a solo exhibition at Sample-Studios Gallery, The Lord Majors Pavilion, Cork City, IE in March 2026. She has artworks in both private and institutional collections, including the OPW, Ireland and the University of Cape Town. Alongside her artistic practice, de Beer is an arts facilitator and has co- organised Cork Zine Fest since 2022. She graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town, South Africa with a BAFA and an honours in Curatorial Studies. Her practice has been supported with awards from The Arts Council of Ireland, Creative Ireland, and Cork County Council.



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