Meg Cowell - Online gallery

Adelaide city on weekend early mornings is the fertile hunting-ground for local emerging-artist Meg Cowell in her ongoing quest for discarded underwear and abandoned feminine garments. Plucked from trees, road-sides and public-toilet waste-bins, these items once collected are each dyed, submerged and then individually photographed.

“During this period a transitory world emerges, a kind-of biological metamorphosis,” she says. “The garments become diaphanous and beautiful, highlighting their mystery”.

For the second chapter in the series a literal up-sizing of the project has produced multiple offspring. Cowell has installed a 1000 litre swimming pool in her inner-city back-yard in which she suspends whole theatrical costumes, couture and wedding dresses.

The effect of these images en masse is evocative, sensual and uncertain; dismembered sirens float unanchored, dark water creatures waft to the surface.

Recently, Meg was a finalist in the Sunshine Coast Art Prize from which forty finalists were selected from over 400 applications around Australia. Currently she is undertaking a mentorship with Deborah Paauwe through the University of South Australia.