About the Exhibition

Faces, bodies, and strange creatures emerge from fabric in Sarah Cowie’s exhibition The Moon Looked at Me Funny. Sarah uses puppetry and fabric sculpture, with digital photography and videography to activate her puppet creatures as they inhabit lush fabric worlds. Her work plays with the effect of pareidolia, the phenomenon of seeing faces and living forms in arbitrary materials and objects. She is interested in the puppet’s ability to disarm anxieties, as well as its power as a means for communication. Her works are both whimsical and unnerving, with the creature’s mimicry of personality and life creating a skewed sense of reality.  

The artist’s work reflects her own anxieties in socialising, and her reliance on materials, objects, and props to feel safer in social settings. Her practice focuses on an interest in persona and communication, themes which she struggles to grasp in her daily life. Influenced by a combination of imagery from nature and human-inspired forms, the puppets reflect a feeling of strangeness and feeling out of place while their materials and design create a sense of comfort. 

About the Artist

Sarah Cowie is a multi-disciplinary artist and art tutor based in Tāmaki Makaurau. In 2021 she graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts with a Master of Fine Arts achieved with Honours. 

Sarah works with puppetry and fabric art, using digital media such as video and photography to perform her puppet works. She also experiments with collage, and illustration. Her practice explores themes of storytelling, materiality, communication, and gesture, and draws inspiration from film and theatre. In her video and photographic work, the vibrant fabric scenery, strange creature designs, and ambiguous storytelling create an uncanny sense of playfulness and uneasiness. 

@sarahjcowieart