Can you tell us about your practice and background?
My name is Peggy Zephyr and I’m a visual artist based on Gumbaynggirr Country on the Mid North Coast of NSW. I work across painting, textiles and installation, and I’ve been practicing professionally full-time for the past four years, although I’ve been making things for as long as I can remember.
I grew up in the UK in a house full of fabric, thread and colour. My mum was a seamstress who supported our family by making clothes, soft toys and many wedding dresses from repurposed materials. Our living room regularly turned into a working studio, bolts of fabric draped over chairs, patterns pinned to the walls. That early exposure to making, resourcefulness and texture has never left me.
I’ve always been drawn to colour first. Bold, saturated, emotional colour. From there my work evolved into an exploration of female experience, identity, memory and the roles we step into over a lifetime. I’m interested in how softness can hold strength, how humour can disarm, and how familiar settings can open up deeper conversations.
On the surface my work can feel playful or visually exuberant, but underneath there is always something more layered going on. Whether I’m painting or building large-scale tufted pieces, I’m trying to create work that feels generous, accessible and quietly powerful.
At its core, my practice is about taking lived experience and giving it scale, visibility and presence.
Can you tell us about the work The Shopping List?
The work is The Shopping List, a large-scale tufted textile piece that forms part of my ongoing project The Cost of Living- Peggy Zephyr’s Supermarket.
The Shopping List takes the familiar format of a handwritten supermarket list – an item many women are completely familiar with and transforms it into a monumental soft sculpture. Rendered in hand-tufted wool, the work elevates something usually disposable and private into something physically present and impossible to ignore.
The list is not groceries. It is a list of roles. Gendered roles. Some chosen, some inherited, some subtly imposed. Each carries an expectation.
The work reflects the shifting identities women move through over a lifetime: sister, daughter, wife. It is autobiographical. These are my roles. Some I inhabit with pride. Some I question.
I have chosen to be child free. That decision sits quietly but deliberately within the piece. It is both a statement and a celebration. The freedom that choice has given me has shaped my life as an artist. For me, exploring life through art has always been more important than raising children. That tension between expectation and autonomy is embedded in the work.
By scaling up the ‘list’, I am asking viewers to reconsider what we measure our worth by. What we tick off. What we feel we owe and who doesn’t like a BIG thing.
The Shopping List is central to The Cost of Living- Peggy Zephyr’s Supermarket, an evolving participatory installation and workshop project. In the workshops, participants respond to similar themes by creating their own satirical supermarket ‘products’, exploring lived experience through humour, familiarity and collective making.
The piece acts as an anchor for the wider project. It invites people in through something recognisable, then gently unsettles what that recognition means.
What materials do you work with?
I work across wood, cardboard, wool, fabric and acrylic, often combining them within large-scale textile sculptures and immersive installations.
I don’t see myself as a painter, sculptor or textile artist in isolation. I’m an artist first. The materials come second. Each piece decides what it needs. Sometimes that’s tufted wool built into soft sculpture. Sometimes it’s painted cardboard, raw timber structures, or hand-written text enlarged into physical form.
I’m drawn to materials that feel accessible and familiar. Cardboard, fabric, wool, everyday surfaces, things people recognise. That familiarity creates an immediate connection. It lowers the barrier to entry.
I’m also interested in scale and physicality. I like work that has presence, that you can stand in front of or move through. Materials that allow for inclusivity and participation matter to me. They invite people in rather than keep them at a distance.
Curiosity drives it all. I want to try things. Push materials. Let the idea lead and allow the form to follow.
What are you currently working on?
Rather than participating in a single exhibition, my focus at the moment is The Cost of Living- Peggy Zephyr’s Supermarket and its workshop program. We recently delivered the first workshop in partnership with Arts Mid North Coast, and seeing the ideas move from planning into a real room with real regional women was incredibly meaningful.
What struck me most was the honesty in the space. Women sharing stories through making, reflecting on their lives through a female lens, and discovering that they could translate that into visual form. Many didn’t consider themselves artists, yet in a single day they created thoughtful, bold works that will form part of the backbone of this evolving Australian project.
There’s something powerful about collective making. The connection, the laughter, the recognition. You can feel the immediate benefit in the room.
The project is supported by the Regional Arts Fund NSW and the Australian Government, alongside Arts Mid North Coast, and that backing has been vital in allowing this work to reach regional communities.
Personally, it’s deeply satisfying to see creative ideas become something larger than myself. I have strong ambitions for this project to travel across regional Australia, then nationally and, ultimately, internationally. To be part of something that supports women while building a significant body of contemporary work feels both purposeful and expansive.
How is this project shaping your professional development?
Professionally, this stage of the project represents a pivotal point in my practice. The Cost of Living- Peggy Zephyr’s Supermarket expands my work beyond the studio into participatory, community-led frameworks while maintaining a strong conceptual and material foundation.
Delivering the first workshop confirmed that the project has depth and integrity. It works in real time. That validation is important.
Alongside this, my practice has been gaining increasing national recognition. I am the recipient of the Joyce Spencer Textile Fellowship and have been a finalist in significant awards including the Mosman Art Prize, Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, the Mac Yapang Art Prize and the National STILL Award, where I have been selected three times and twice received the People’s Choice Award. This broader visibility signals that the work is resonating both critically and publicly.
With support from the Regional Arts Fund NSW and the Australian Government, the project now has the structure to grow. I am also preparing to undertake a significant residency in the United States, which will extend the workshop model internationally and allow the themes to be explored within a new cultural context.
It feels like a moment of expansion. The practice is deepening, the scale is increasing, and the conversations are widening. Professionally, that sense of momentum is both grounding and energising.
What do you hope audiences take away from your work?
I hope audiences question the things we so often accept without noticing. The roles we inherit. The expectations we absorb. The systems we move through without asking who wrote them.
I particularly want women to feel a sense of recognition. To see themselves in the work. To feel understood, challenged, maybe even relieved. If someone stands in front of a piece and thinks, “Yes. That’s me,” then something has shifted.
Inclusion is central to what I do. I don’t want art to feel elitist or coded in intimidating language. I want it to be open, playful and generous. Art can have depth without being austere. It can be conceptually rigorous and still make people laugh.
I love the idea of noise in a quiet gallery. Conversation. Laughter. People discussing, debating, even touching the work where appropriate. I want energy in the room.
I’m serious about making art less serious in tone, while still being serious in intent. It can be both. Playful and challenging. Accessible and layered. That tension is where the work lives.
What’s next?
The Cost of Living- Peggy Zephyr’s Supermarket will continue to roll out through regional workshops, with ambitions to take the project across states, nationally and, following an upcoming residency in the United States, into an international context.
I’m currently in conversation about several larger-scale commissions and collaborations, exploring how my textile installations might operate in new kinds of public and corporate spaces. I’m interested in projects that allow for scale, participation and bold visual presence.
If you’re a regional gallery, community organisation or women’s group and feel your community would benefit from hosting a Cost of Living workshop, I’d love to hear from you. The project is designed to travel and adapt.
And if you’re a curator, programmer or organisation looking to exhibit or commission ambitious, material-led contemporary work, I’m always open to conversations.
Growth for me is about connection as much as production. I’m curious about what happens when the work reaches new audiences, new places and new contexts.
Where can people find your work?
You can find more about my work at:
My website includes a contact page for exhibition enquiries, commissions and workshop bookings.
For upcoming The Cost of Living workshops and events, simply search ‘Peggy Zephyr’ on Humanitix to see current listings.
You can also subscribe via my website to receive the non-spam Zephyr Zine, where I share news, upcoming projects and events first.