Biography
Steph Goodger was born in Kent, England, in 1974. She studied at the Kent Institute of Art and Design from 1990 to 1992, then at the Surrey Institute from 1992 to 1995. Her Master of Arts Degree in Painting was completed at Brighton University in 1999. Her studio was based in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, from 2000 to 2001. She exhibited with Galerie De Roos Van Tudor, the Netherlands, until 2006.
Goodger was selected for the prestigious painting exhibition, John Moores 23, at the Walker Gallery, Liverpool, in 2004. She subsequently exhibited at the Miami Art Basel in the same year. She was included in the final selection for the Royal Academy Summer Show in 2003 and 2006.
After being short listed for the Celeste Art Prize in 2006, she was a finalist in 2007, selected to exhibit at the Old Truman Brewery, London. The exhibition then moved to the galleries of Lyon and Turnbull, Edinburgh.
In 2004 she moved to the Bordeaux region of France and created the gallery Salon des Fables with Julie McDermott and Julian Rowe. In 2007 Salon des Fables subsequently became the title of an Association which takes exhibitions to new venues, in France initially.
“I am currently inspired by the work of the Renaissance alchemists, who tried with metaphysics to explain the universe in single, coherent theories. I admire these brave attempts and also aim to create a sense of a complete world on the canvas.
There are often two kinds of space in my paintings, one material and one ethereal. The ethereal is found through descent in most cases. The things that happen beneath, that one can never see but only imagine, are contrasted with things that are, or can be, known. For painting I find this is a very rich territory to work within.”
Statement
Ether and Matrix
Oil on Canvas 2004-5
Matrix: a system or mass in which structures and forms are embedded; an environment or material in which something can develop.
Ether: an omnipresent substance formerly thought to permeate all space and to transmit light.
Art as megalomania: The desire to see an entire universe of ones own, of light and weight and structure, is perhaps a bit of a worry. These paintings try to be that, to have shapes as characters, inhabiting a separate world. But really, I hope, one could justify this as the adult version of playing with dolls houses, toy soldiers or farms.
There are rebellions against rules, collisions of forms, power as well as delicacy, ugliness and darkness, beauty and light. This abstraction is a game, a piece of theatre, issuing an invitation to imagine another place, to play by its rules or within its system, to sit within its borders just for a while.
Inspirations: Swimming pools and squash courts, viewed from the balconies above, gave rise to ideas about action in enclosed spaces. The geometric structures, with coloured lines, tiled floors, railings and steps, are essentially boxes containing life and heat, rules of engagement and chaos.
These self-contained spaces may provide a little escape from the world, with the total absorption in an activity, game, or sensation; they where a good starting point for creating my own such spaces on canvas.
