About Pennie Steel

Steel is not an architect, urban planner or engineer but a builder of imagined architectural propositions, improbable structures, civic buildings and private pavilions.  While architects and designers grapple with planning and development approvals, their ambitions subdued by regulations and budgets, Steel conjures up fictitious implausible cities that lie just beyond our grasp.  Stepping into Steel’s world is to journey into abandoned places and impossible dreams. 
The more time you spend with her work, the more enigmatic it becomes.

Steel’s recent body of work, the untitled paintings and sculptures that form part of her Ideal States and Sacred Places series in an unapologetic indulgence in immersing oneself in another world.  At first glance her paintings appear restrained, classical, reminiscent of the 18th and 19th century prints and drawings of idealised ruins, while her individual clusters of miniature buildings with their towering spires, arches, Juliet balconies, ornamental balustrades and Escher-like staircases are not architectural maquettes or models, awaiting the reality of construction in steel, glass and concrete, but imagined worlds made of paper entrapped behind glass cloches and bell jars.  In the same way that architectural models are in constant flux, acting as a tool to demonstrate construction, investigate form or materiality, conceptualise an idea or materialise a first thought,
Steel’s art is a layering, interweaving and reworking of themes relating to memory, architecture, mythology, spirituality and histories that have dominated her artistic practice over the last fifty years.  
Dolla S. Merrillees ©2023