Drawing on lived experience as a woman of Greek heritage and a mother, Lampropoulou revisits an ancient medical fiction historically used to pathologise women’s bodies. She engages with this myth to examine the persistence of patriarchal control and oppression in both private and public life.
At the centre of the installation, a table forms a charged domestic altar of symbolic objects. This structure is set within an intimate yet unsettling atmosphere created by experimentally processed photographic self-portraits, moving image and sound. Together, these elements explore and unpick narratives and histories that frame women as unstable, uncontrolled and irrational.
Balancing vulnerability with defiance, the exhibition is an act of reclamation, proposing the female body to be a vessel of memory, power and transformation.
Sound design by Oliver O'Brien.
Please join us to celebrate the opening of this exhibition at First Site Gallery, 5–7pm,
Wednesday 2 September.
Stav Lampropoulou, 'Wandering Womb' 2025, archival print. Image courtesy of the artist.
Stav Lampropoulou is a Melbourne-based photographic artist whose practice explores identity, memory and the embodied experience of womanhood. Working across photography, text and installation, she examines how personal and cultural histories are carried through the body and domestic space. Drawing on her Greek-Australian heritage and lived experience of motherhood, her work brings together research and emotion to engage themes of migration, intergenerational trauma and transformation.
Her practice often moves between documentation and introspection, using image-making and installation to create intimate spaces for reflection on power, inheritance and belonging. Through this approach, Lampropoulou explores how gendered experience is shaped by cultural memory, family histories and the everyday rituals of domestic life.
Banner image: Stav Lampropoulou, The Wandering Womb and Other Myths (still) 2025, single-channel digital video. Image courtesy of the artist.
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RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
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