Fionnuala McGowan graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2014, and now lives and works in Glasgow.


Fionnuala’s practice is underpinned by a fascination with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which discusses the concept of belief versus knowledge and how this affects our interpretation of reality. In the allegory, darkness, firelight, daylight and other changes in the environment all influenced the people’s judgment and their belief of what was real. Drawing inspiration from this, Fionnuala uses her work to explore human relationships to space. Physical, tangible space, digital space, illusionistic reproductions – each of these has a role in altering our spatial perception. Using a combination of print and sculpture, raw materials and photographic images she encourages the viewer to question how they interact with and understand what they are seeing. The imagery and structures she uses reference the abstract and geometric forms found within nature, architecture and science, and she often use this imagery as a source of inspiration. She manipulates these images either digitally or through methods such as folding, crumpling or photocopying, producing works which have an illusion of space and an uncertainty as to whether they depict something natural or artificial, real or illusory.