Here and Now: Gold Coast Triennial 2024 Digital Gallery
Meg Stoios
b.1990 Melbourne VIC, Gold Coast QLD
Lilacs Out of the Dead Land, 2024
oil on canvas, fishing spears with hook attachments, bottle caps
Image courtesy of HOTA, Home of the Arts
Artist Statement
Lilacs Out of the Dead Land is a self-portrait meditating on the hopes and apprehensions of the artist's transition from living and working in Melbourne to Queensland.
The title is borrowed from the opening of TS Eliot's poem The Waste Land, where the promises of spring are reframed as a cruelty.
Ron Robertson-Swann’s iconic The Vault, which has featured in previous work by Stoios, is painted enveloped in the looming embrace of another sculpture of his, Reefbreak.
About the Artist
Meg Stoios is invested in complex narrative and visual language structures in painting and sculpture, and has a highly technical approach to composition and mark making. The use of life models is integral to their work.
Using both figurative and abstract imagery, Meg unpacks personal and shared traumas; revealing the psycho-scapes of interpersonal relationships.
Born in Melbourne, 1990, Meg completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts (now University of Melbourne) graduating in 2012. Stoios has exhibited Australia-wide, including the ACCA Pop-Up Gallery, Lon Gallery, C3 Gallery, Kings ARI, TCB Art Inc., Moana Project Space among others, was a recipient of the John Vickery scholarship, supported by the Australia Council, Creative Spaces Australia and Arts Queensland, and has been a finalist in the Wollumbin Art Award. Meg currently lives and works on the lands of the Tulgigin and Kombumerri families in South East Queensland.
