Asteroidea was a two meter diameter galaxy of starfish that was made in 2003 to hang against the east window of Salthouse Church in north Norfolk as part of a group exhibition. The idea came from a series of walks, at low tide, around the coast, during which there was a mass stranding of starfish. …
Delicate seaweeds and bryozoa washed up from the chalk reef are laid onto chalk, sprinkled with soot from my chimney, and then removed, leaving their absence in the chalk. The soot laid down upon the chalk of this fragile reef puts me in front of my culpability, the damage that my actions do to the…
This series of works explores my relationship with where I live and my complicity in the climate crisis that affects it. I began this series during lockdown in the early 2020’s, at a time when we all fell back on resources close to home. At the back of my store room I found a small…
What would it be like to wear the landscape like a skin? To be sensuously wrapped in those elements? This is a question that has become crucial to our times. Supposing, instead of walking on a footpath or a beach, we were walking IN, or inside an ever changing kaleidoscope of texture, colour, light and…
Chthon is one of several Greek words for ‘earth’; it refers to that which is under the earth. In English, ‘chthonic’ describes deities or spirits of the underworld. I spent 18 months working with saltmarsh mud – slick, liquid, shifting – exploring what it does, how it moves. At the same time this activity has…
This heart was commissioned by the National Trust and the Climate Coalition and was made on Brancaster Beach. The theme of the work was ‘the green heart’. Working with Jessica Perry and Antonia Soto and with the help of friends and the NT Warden at Brancaster, we made a human heart on the beach so…
This is a body of work inspired by owls. They are made using the bones from owl pellets, which owls regurgitate as a way of getting rid of all the indigestible parts of the creatures that they eat – mice, voles, shrews, rats, beetles, worms etc. The delicate bones are impressed into the paper and…
Exhibition at Salthouse Church on the north Norfolk coast by Britz and McGowan. Much of the work for this exhibition evolved out of a visual conversation between the two artists, a piece by one artist generating an answer by the other. The work explored the transformation of opposites and the cyclical processes of birth, death…
A two year residency at RSPB Minsmere in Suffolk: Full details from: memoriesforminsmere.wordpress.com
Splinter Group is a collaboration of artists, Liz McGowan, Jessica Perry, Bill Smith and Antonia Soto. We work outdoors, exploring ways of combining the actions of fire, water, earth and air. We create sculptures that exist briefly as live events and are recorded permanently as digital photographs. Environmental concerns and a fascination with the behaviour…
Installation in Salthouse Church, Norfolk by Britz and McGowan View from the west end This work had its roots in a walk in stages around the coast of Norfolk. We generally walked the low tide line, and we talked, took photographs, and collected bits and pieces that caught our eye. This was when we first…
Reed installation by Salttrails artists Liz McGowan and Jane Frost for Aisle and Air, an exhibition at Cley curated bay Isabel Vasseur A fine structure of walls made from reed that meanders and curls in upon itself to form a hide. When the act of seeking shelter – under a tree, in a cave –…
Abrasion was born out of a conversation between artist Malca Schotten and myself on Happisburgh beach on the north Norfolk coast. We had been asked to put together an exhibition for the King of Hearts in Norwich and had discovered a shared interest in Happisburgh, a village which has been slowly disappearing over the…
Projected image by Britz and McGowan Artlights was a festival of projected image in Cromer and was part of Cromer Prospect, the town’s regeneration project. Working with Commissions East and North Norfolk District Council, Margie Britz and I projected a galaxy of starfish onto the great tower of Cromer Parish Church. The flints that face the church…
A Norfolk Songline was a multimedia arts project inspired by the Peddars Way, a 46-mile Roman Road stretching across Norfolk and now part of a National Trail, which overlaps with the ancient Icknield Way. The idea of a songline comes from the Australian Aboriginal belief system, in which each ancient track is the score of…
Collaborations with artist Jane Frost: ‘Salt Trails’ and ‘Mapping the Wind’ In 2009 Jane and I offered a series of walking conversations for the exhibition at Salthouse Church curated by Simon Martin with the theme of salt. We wanted to create work through relationship with place and people. So we offered a series of highly…
As Lead Artist, I worked with South Norfolk District Council to select artists, shape the project, and liaise between artists and funders, and later reported back to an Exit Conference. I helped to select three artists who, along with myself, were to make temporary installations at four riverside sites and to keep web diaries. I…
Windscape, funded by the Arts Council, explored the way in which the wind is affected by the tower of Salthouse Church. Making visible the invisible, a series of flags were sited around the base of the church, each bearing one line of a riddle written by Hugh Lupton in the voice of the 6th Century bard,…
Liz McGowan 