DRAW Space are excited to present Stephanie Houghton / VIBES. Opening 6-8pm Thursday 18 September and running until 5pm Sunday 12 October, Melinda Hunt (curator) and the DRAW Space board invite you to join the artist to celebrate this remarkable exhibition.
VIBES presents a selection of drawings made to affect the viewer’s perceptual capacities. Drawing on art historical precedents such as resonance and wonder, large scale works in watercolour and graphite integrate material sensitivity with technical ability to create drawings that encourage slow looking, resonance, and contemplative experience.
Viewing Houghton’s work may be compared to the experience of encountering the work of Agnes Martin:
You can drop through her paintings into the memory of sensation. Hers is a non-illusionistic window onto the art experiences we have almost subliminally in our lives, far away from art objects.
Kasha Linville, “Agnes Martin: An Appreciation,” Artforum, Summer (1971): 72
The works are produced through the creation of systems that draw on both holistic and scientific information resulting in subtle, carefully constructed drawings that foreground the artists dedication to a practice of enquiry, of patience and of attentiveness.
Opening night wine by Famelia Wine. @famelia.wine
Documentation from the artist’s DFA exhibition, National Art School, August 2025
Stephanie Houghton / VIBES – the artist in conversation
Stephanie Houghton’s VIBES is an exhibition that seems to slow the air in the room. Works in watercolour and graphite unfold in finely measured intervals, their subtle shifts in tone and pattern asking the viewer not just to look, but to attune. The surfaces hum softly, like the lingering afterimage of sunlight behind closed eyes, carrying a quiet radiance that deepens with time. These drawings are the product of a disciplined, meditative process — systems built from natural ratios, breath synchronised with the hand, pigment laid down with unhurried precision. In the stillness, the work opens itself to the possibility of resonance: that elusive exchange between artwork, space, and viewer in which perception recalibrates and time feels subtly altered.
Houghton’s practice speaks to a rich lineage of artists: Agnes Martin, Robert Hunter, Mary Corse, whose work engages the viewer’s sensory capacities at a finely tuned level. Yet VIBES is firmly its own: a dialogue between the formal clarity of the grid and the atmospheric potential of colour and light, between the order of structure and the subtle unpredictability of perception. These questions invite Houghton to reflect on the conditions she creates for looking, on the influence of the slow art movement, and on how resonance might be felt, both in her own experience and in that of those who encounter her work.
Your work invites lingering – how do you see VIBES echoing or challenging the ideas of the slow art movement?
Slow art is a movement that brings together time spent making, with time spent viewing, to foster the opportunity for a deeper level of engagement with an artwork. The drawings presented in VIBES distil my meditative processes into a format that encourages the viewer to question their perceptive capacities, by challenging their ability to focus and discern the structure of the work. The need to focus more intently encourages slow looking, which through the coalescence of materiality and memory, shapes the opportunity for the instigation of an affective or emotional response. Spending time with these works promotes an embodied response, with the potential to reward the act of slow looking, by creating a memorable experience for the viewer.
When you think about resonance in your work is it something you actively aim to create or something that emerges once the drawings meet the space and the viewer?
By basing the underlying structure of my drawings on sacred ratios and scientific data, I attempt to activate resonance to engage the viewer in a deeper conversation with the work. Many of my drawings induce a kind of visual indeterminacy, achieved through the layering of watercolour washes, to produce semi-transparent forms that absorb and reflect light. When installed, the drawings shimmer subtly, contributing to the emergence of resonance between the space and the viewer, a resonance that may combine with the materiality and architectural features of the space to evoke atmosphere and memory, encouraging a deep embodied experience.
Your process is meditative and highly structured — how might that rhythm and focus be sensed by someone standing in front of your work?
I have spoken with attendees at a recent exhibition, some of whom commented on the level of patience and attention to detail required to produce these drawings. They seemed to intuitively understand the meditative state necessary to the process, the focus and physical discipline needed to complete one graphite line—one stroke of the brush. I attribute this response to the concept of embodied simulation—a sense-driven form of relational experience that utilises neural mirroring to create in the viewer, the physical experience, actions, sensations, and emotions of others, allowing them to feel a unique intersubjective connection to the work.[1]
Can you tell me about a time when you experienced resonance in another artist’s work, and how that encounter shaped your own approach?
In November 2022 I organised to visit the storage facility of the Art Gallery of New South Wales to view Robert Hunter’s, Painting No. 3 Sydney, 1987. Robert Hunter produced large geometric works, noted for their ability to elude perception, using a range of off-white hues. Because photographs of this work lacked detail, I arranged to see the painting in person, to fully experience the resonance associated with Hunter’s work. After considering the work as a whole for some time, I sat quietly—gazing intently at a section of the composition where there was little tonal variance between forms; “the hard surface of the work seemed to dissolve before my eyes, gaining an almost three-dimensional appearance, softening, shifting, and drawing me into an otherworldly dreamscape where I was enveloped in a swirling sea of whiteness.”[2] This experience validated my practice, instilling in me a quiet confidence in my drawings, and their ability to instigate a deeply felt and resonant response in the viewer.
What role does the architecture of DRAW Space play in shaping the atmosphere you are trying to create?
Every art gallery presents unique challenges to the artist, the DRAW Space gallery is approximately 9 metres long and 4 metres wide, featuring 3.8-metre-high walls for installing large works. It has a large glass frontage that opens directly onto the street, providing an abundance of ambient light. The narrow width of this gallery space encourages a conversation between works hung on opposing walls, while the perpendicular wall at the end of the gallery, provides opportunity for an even closer relationship between drawings. The minimal nature of this gallery complements the form and materiality of my drawings—encouraging a sensitive installation, inviting the formation of an atmosphere conducive to a resonant or contemplative experience.
Do you think your drawings speak more to the viewer’s eyes, their body, or their mind — or is resonance about all three working together?
Resonance seems to occur through the interaction of spatial atmospheres, with the synergistic operation of all bodily senses to create an impact on neural processing capacities. The initial encounter with an exhibition involves more than just a visual experience; on entering a space, bodily senses become activated by a range of perceptible and imperceptible factors, including quality of light, odour, architectural features, material textures and the emotional energy emitted by other viewers. Contact with my drawings is instigated via visual perception, however, the development of resonance will depend on the viewers’ inherent nature and physiological capacities—their willingness to engage in a more immersive experience, by allowing time to process the work not only with their eyes, but with their whole being.[3]
[1] Vittorio Gallese, “Bodily Framing,” in Experience: Culture, Cognition, and the Common Sense, eds. Caroline A. Jones, David Mather, and Rebecca Uchill (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2016), 243.
[2] Stephanie Houghton, “Affect, Perception and Materiality in the Creation of a Contemplative Exhibition” (Doctoral Exegesis, National Art School, 2025), 70.
[3] James Sterling Pitt, “Seeing Through the Bottom of One’s Feet,” in Agnes Martin: Independence of Mind, ed. Chelsea Wheathers and Megan Mulry (Santa Fe, Radius Books, 2022), 131.
Documentation from the artist’s DFA exhibition, National Art School, August 2025