Marion Gordon-Flower

Marion Gordon-Flower lives in Tāmarki Makaurau where she has been an ongoing exhibitor in galleries across the city and beyond.  Recognised as a bicultural artist, her work has been shaped by growing up in a Tūhoe community in Te Urewera.  Her deep appreciation for Papatūānuku, and the wonders of universal forces, form the basis of her paintings and installations which retain an element of the experimental.  Recent artworks have paid homage to coastal environments of Manukau Harbour and Tahuna Torea, and through which she was a finalist in Tāmaki Estuary and Ecology Art Awards 2024.  Her contribution to Moa Freeze was an opportunity to revisit earlier foundations and explore familiar subject matter in a dynamic new way.

Response to Moa Freeze concept came intuitively, sparked-off by compositional elements in previous works:  silver paint on board from “Chalice” 2020, the oval from “Shoreline” 2021; layout of “Ata Marie: Morning Pause” 2024; tones from “Love Notes to the Soul” 2024.  Cloth from art school referenced my maternal whakapapa, sculptered and overlayed sensitively with clay paint. This came to be a pivotal moment, when I had to leave the past behind and build something new, the key point of transition being my art degree, where I could fully express and validate my bicultural identity.  Three gold-ink lines painted across the landscape were in homage to Papatūānuku.  In painting these, my mind sequenced “Holy Trinity”, “Tane and the three baskets of knowledge” and “the three golden apples” in Greek mythology.  They are a ponderance on the wairua world and of archetypes, our sacred connections, and realms that remain beyond full comprehension.