Exhibition four, Season Three: 2 November – 6 December
Artist: Arwen Flowers
BIG-LITTLE EXCHANGES
A series of five paintings, changing weekly
2024
Arwen Flower’s paintings in the noticeboard display traces of her body’s interactions with the box’s dimensions and location, reflecting an attitude of care and concern for constructed environments that impact the well-being of those that occupy them. She aims to call attention to critical repetitive care work that underpins, supports and connects this community’s physical and social infrastructure.
New Zealand artist Arwen Flowers (MVA) examines body-held and felt learning through her painting practice. Flowers’ body’s knowledge has been acquired through domestic maintenance activities. This internal wisdom emerges as gesturally painted abstractions experienced as events. Each painting contains traces of a unique visual language encoded with references to places, people, objects, memories and experiences. While applying and removing mediums with wiping and scrubbing motions, Flowers explores states of physical and material control. Each mark results from close proximity encounters with prepared surfaces and is influenced by haptic engagement and borrowed colour while working with and against abjection. Flowers connects with the viewer through affective relationships, questioning notions of care, ownership and agency.