Lisa Creagh studied Fine Art and Art History at Goldsmiths College, and then completed a Masters in Photography at Brighton University. Between 1997 and 2001 she lived in New York, developing an art practice combining painting with digital imaging and photography. Upon her return to the UK, she continued to make artworks and founded The Brighton Photo Fringe in 2003, a vital grassroots network of photographers, originally running in conjunction with the Brighton Photo Biennial, but now operating as a stand-alone organisation and bi-annual event.

As a curator she has delivered large-scale photographic projects. In 2006 she received critical acclaim for the originality and collaborative nature of ‘Tidy Street’, a site-specific installation, where she transformed a street in Brighton into a series of light-boxes utilising the windows of small terraced houses. The project was supported by an Arts Council England Award.

Her major, on-going project, ‘The Instant Garden’ was begun in 2008 and is inspired by Dutch Flower paintings, in particular those by Rachel Ruysch (1664 – 1750) and is a combination of digital patterns and floral still life. The work has been widely exhibited and was awarded a development grant by The Arts Council of England. Creagh writes, “The Instant Garden is a new kind of photograph, one ‘made’ not ‘taken’, but no less beautiful for being artificially ‘natural’.

Part of this project, ‘Floriculture’, developed into a major commission to photograph the Exbury Nerines, housed at the Rothchild family’s estate at Exbury Gardens. In a greenhouse the size of a large field, where there are housed more nerines than in the rest of the world combined, Creagh documented some of these extraordinary and rare flowers, many resulting randomly from cross-pollinations that take place there. “Unlike any other flower head I’ve seen, these blooms actually dazzle. The structure of their cells is multi-directional, creating what looks like glitter on the surface of their petals.”