ABOUT THE WORK

The work explores the boundaries of space, objects, perception, and synthesis.

Concerned with connectivity and the human condition, McGowan’s practice utilises the structure of the white cube to shift visual perception into an alternate reality. This intentional space detaches itself from everything outside, and the inside becomes a multilayered entity. Drawn to the meeting point of polarities, such as mind and matter, life and death, the spiritual and physical, inside and outside, she explores the overlapping materiality of the natural and the man-made world. She visions a space without time, in a world that never stops. She hopes to provide a space of tranquillity.

McGowan’s artworks reincarnate in multiple life forms, denying linear time as they appear alongside younger material forms of themselves. This ritual in McGowan’s practice has created an eternal connection between her past movements and our conditioned consumerist collective, and allows her to re-discover the past, and propel it into her future installations. These realities are informed by topography – the arrangement of the natural and artificial physical features of an area, and sacred geometry – the mathematical formulas that serve as a foundation upon and through which everything exists.

Though the visual narrative is carefully orchestrated throughout, there is a sense of play present in the joining of certain materials. Tensions arise from disconnecting, manipulating and reassembling everyday materials – by re-contextualising the familiar, a level of uncertainty is provoked in the viewer. McGowan directs them in a way that makes the viewer conscious of their step, bringing their awareness into the physical present and promoting slow- looking. While some things gain function, others lose it amidst the interference, transforming from the familiar to the unknown. McGowan presents us with a new image and a new world.

The works seen here are:
Love Me?
Erecting Subside
Underwater
Floorpiece
Leaning on Periphery

Reflection

Playing upon the meeting point of polarities, I create outsider objects and spaces that remind us of their history and making. Both familiar and unfamiliar, in their material, these peculiarities remind us to be present and to accept change.