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In 2000, Clementine Stoney Maconachie reached the pinnacle of her sport, representing Australia in swimming at the Sydney Olympic Games.
More than 20 years later, she is back at the Olympics — this time as one of six Olympian Artists whose work is now on show at the Palais de Tokyo during the Paris Olympic Games.
Administered by the Olympic Museum, the Olympian Artist program has been running since the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics.
It's open to Olympic and Paralympic athletes, who are invited to create artworks that speak to the values of Olympism — excellence, respect and friendship — and the Olympic experience.
The swimmer-turned-artist explains to ABC Arts how her Olympic career has come full circle.
A swimming career cut short
In 2000, Stoney Maconachie was riding high after winning the silver medal in the 200m backstroke at the Short Course World Championships in Athens and making her Olympic debut in Sydney, where she finished 13th overall.
A year later, she broke the 200m backstroke world record (now held by fellow Australian Kaylee McKeown) at the Australian Championships in Perth.
"Everything just clicked," she says of her record-breaking performance.
Stoney Maconachie loved her life as an elite swimmer — everything from the training to the travel — but it all came to an end in 2003 when she was struck down by a virus.
"My body just shut down," says Stoney Maconachie, who was forced into an early retirement and "slept for two years" following her illness.
While it marked the end of her promising swimming career, she remains stoic about the episode: "That's sport; that's life."
Finding art
Once she was well enough, Stoney Maconachie set about rebuilding her life after swimming.
"I slowly made my way back into living," she recalls.
Her new life took her away from the pool and into the worlds of art and fashion — a leap not as unexpected as it first appears.
Her mother is an abstract painter and Stoney Maconachie grew up surrounded by art.
"I loved going to galleries. [Art] was always around, always an influence, and always something I loved — a passion," she says.
But with her focus on swimming, Stoney Maconachie didn't study art at school and never imagined she'd pursue a career as a sculptor. She says it took "time and confidence" — and the end of her swimming career — to develop her artistic practice.
After a stint as a model, she worked as a visual merchandiser for Australian women's fashion label Sass & Bide, where she relished making props and crafting 3D installations for boutique window and store displays.
"I learnt a lot with [Sass & Bide] as they expanded and grew," she says.
It was a role that reconnected her with a childhood love of "making", and her creative practice progressed to designing custom furniture and sculpting in her spare time.
Once she had children — a daughter and twin sons — Stoney Maconachie started a consultancy providing freelance visual merchandising, set design and event decorating.
"On the side, I was always making art, but not really selling it — just doing it for myself and refining my process and … my style," she says.
When COVID hit in 2020, like many creatives, Stoney Maconachie's work dried up, leaving her with time to concentrate on her art — "after the homeschooling".
With a career on pause and three young children at home, sculpting acted as a "circuit breaker" during the COVID lockdowns, and she decided to take up art full-time.
Inspired by Matisse and Olympic pictograms
Fittingly for a former Olympic swimmer, Stoney Maconachie's work is primarily concerned with movement: the movement of the material in her hands, the movement of her body as she works with it, and the inspiration she draws from moving forms and shapes in nature.
The artist is known for the simplicity of her stone totems and folded metal pieces and line sculptures.
"I'm always exploring different shapes and balance," she says.
"With the totems, there's always a balance to it — trying to make things appear lighter than they are."
Stoney Maconachie says working with metal is particularly satisfying for an "impatient" person like her.
"It's quick to cut; it's relatively quick to bend … You can move quickly with it."
Stoney Maconachie's six Olympic works include a large brass wall piece (Citius, Altius, Fortius Communiter) and a series of totems composed of simplistic figures carved from aerated concrete known as Hebel (Reach and A Fine Balance) and steel (Higher; Stronger and Together) arranged in gravity-defying stacks.
She drew inspiration from French artist Henri Matisse, German-French sculptor Jean Arp and Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancuși in creating the "stripped back, simple, abstract" athletic figures.
The sculpted figures also recall the Olympic pictograms that have been used in the modern era to signify different sports.
Stoney Maconachie travelled from Sydney to Paris to attend the exhibition opening on July 25. She'll also relive her Olympic experience at the pool — as a spectator this time, after snagging tickets to the swimming.
"I'm very excited about it," she says.
Olympian Artists: A Celebration of the Universal Languages of Art and Sport runs until August 11 at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.