BARBARA STEPHENSON

Barbara Stephenson is a multidisciplinary maker and art activist based in Queensland. Since winning the 2019/2020 Textile Art Prize Queensland Regional Art Awards, her striking standing wool textiles have been selected as finalist in a number of art prizes. She has two solo exhibitions - Ebb and Flow: Gatakers Art Space Maryborough 2023 and Safeguard: Warwick Art Gallery 2023; as well as a collaborative exhibition, Colourways with AJ Gogas, Rosalie Gallery 2025. Barbara works with textiles for their texture, colour, and their stories of past use. Barbara explores the delicate balance between natural complexity and human-designed order through repetitive lines, circles, and spirals. Her practice is rooted in the narrative potential of materials, using texture and colour to reflect on our collective hopes and fears for the future.

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​In My Creek Bed, Barbara reimagines 19th-century Northern English rugmaking, transforming the humble craft of rag-rugging into sophisticated, three-dimensional sculpture. By repurposing textile offcuts into layered, tactile forms, she treats every raw edge as a deliberate, drawn line. These rhythmic structures, composed of repeated circles, spirals, and lines, mimic the organic accumulation found within a creek bed. Through this meticulous process, Barbara explores the tension between natural complexity and human intervention, illustrating how both forces perpetually shape and reshape the landscape. Her work stands as a poignant dialogue between the fluidity of water and the permanence of human craft.