Stephanie Doddridge
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Winner of the Helmpann Academy / Hill Smith Art Advisory Award in 2021, Stephanie Doddridge is an emerging contemporary artist working on Kaurna country, South Australia. Stephanie takes an autobiographical approach to art making, reflecting on personal experiences and feelings and representing them through sculptural practice. She engages metaphors of the self, and with home grown produce, investigating the potential for foods and gardens to hold memories.

In 2021, Stephanie was selected to exhibit in Hatched: National Graduate Exhibition, at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. She is currently studying a Bachelor of Art and Design (Honours) at the South Australian School of Art and the University of South Australia.

“Through contemporary sculptural practice I investigate nostalgia and memory within objects and locations. My work is autobiographical; I reflect on joyful memories, of skills learned and experiences which have shaped my ways of living.

My process begins with seed sowing. I nurture, feed, water, forage, harvest, collect, weave, alter, cast, fire and arrange objects, remembering and practicing through living. Fresh produce is a reoccurring theme in my work, which elicits memories of family, shared meals, and shared garden labour. The produce speaks of fertility, cycles and generations of nurture. I honour produce that connects me to childhood, family and gardens through ceramic casting. I recreate ghost objects from the past in porcelain, and create surface decoration with harvested botanicals from my own garden. I recollect experiences of times and places in the past through combinations of old and new objects.”