Stacey Allan

Stacey Allan’s work explores feminist world-building to address the everyday silencing of women. Through sculpture, iconography, video art, and song, she is developing her own mythology of deific beings and imagined realms where the overlooked stories of women are held in the highest regard, and all women’s voices are heard.

Drawing influences from folk art, goddess art, surrealism, and science fiction, she brings magical thinking to a subject she cares deeply about: women in today’s world who find themselves without a voice, whether through societal pressures, patriarchal oppression, coercive control, anxiety, depression or other forms of trauma. These subjects are the driving force behind her world-building ethos. She has been greatly inspired by Hélène Cixous’ 1976 feminist text The Laugh of the Medusa, which states that “Woman must put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement.”  This artist’s world is one designed to give voices to the voiceless and to openly raise these often-hushed topics through allegory.

Her practice is multi-disciplinary, as her ideas inform her choice of material and medium. Her Degree Show sculpture, Avatar of the Beachcomber, is a physical representation of her beachcombing deity. Standing over 2.5m tall, it is made with a steel armature, hand-painted fabrics, and over 80 ceramic objects. Accompanying this piece is a song, The Beachcomber’s Song, which gives context to the sculpture, while driving home the message at the core of the work.

Stacey intends for her work to give an audience pause for thought; perhaps tell a part of a story to which they can relate. However, in this world, hope is key; voices are heard with empathy and every story is important. While the seed of this world was planted in darkness, it is being brought to life from a place of light.