About the Artist

​

Materials compel Stephanie McGowan to create objects that hold on to and record the passing of time. She is preoccupied by the memory of materials and has become bound within her practice to utilise materials as a way of possessing the past and recollecting it in the present. McGowan's practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture and installation; working in a repetitive process she forms layers of physical interactions; in the wrapping of thread/ wool or by continually dipping fabric in dye.

​

The materials themselves also echo a timely quality, employing seasonal foliage and vegetables gathered from daily trips as a dipping medium, these substances further their lifespan within her studio often ending in a residual eternal dust. McGowan also employs pixelated imagery in the making of her thread painting/drawings to abstract memories into unfamiliar shapes and codes.

​

McGowan is drawn to the meeting point of polarities, such as life and death.  Allowing the past to exist physically now is unnatural and disorderly; the materiality of the natural and manmade worlds has developed as a visual metaphor for these abnormal crossovers. Hoping to create objects charged with creative actions and memory that act as both barriers and connections between her and a viewer.