A Fruitful Conversation. Mixed paint & mediums on stretched canvas. 760 x 760.
Arwen Flowers adopts a critical eye and an exploratory approach to interrogate our gestural relationship with domesticated surfaces. Flowers’ work, the use of materials and how she works with them are influenced by her lifetime experience doing repetitious housework. Drawn to materials that convey abject textures reminiscent of messiness and borrowed colour from her home surroundings, Flowers attempts through her practice to examine the junctures between surface imperfections and gestural interruption. Paint records and dictates her gestures as she adds and removes material deposited in splashes, smears, puddles and sprinkles. She is interested in the dichotomy between tedious or meaningful labour within the home - a site where surfaces are valued for their usefulness, longevity and aesthetic qualities and work is considered maintenance. Flowers believes the impact of navigating these values questions notions of domestication, care and place. Flowers develops a creative dialogue between material properties and herself as a maker through forms that emerge from her gestural interactions with media, and substrates to express literal and metaphorical relationships between chaos and control.
During 2023-2024 Flowers is completing a Master of Visual Arts at AUT, Auckland, New Zealand.
During 2023-2024 Flowers is completing a Master of Visual Arts at AUT, Auckland, New Zealand.