Marion Harper: Restless Encounter

18 May – 18 August 2024

Marion Harper is an artist based in Merricks, Boon Wurrung/Bunurong on the Mornington Peninsula. As well as painting, her practice incorporates a range of media including sound, video, installation, ceramics, and photo-based media.

Harper explores the boundaries between our bodies and spaces, between individuals and society, bringing into focus our continuous negotiation and adaptation to changes that life throws our way. By approaching embodiment—our experience of our own bodies—as unstable, Harper asks: ‘where does a body begin and where does it end? What are our limits and entanglements? How do we push beyond the habitual, inviting a fresh perspective on movement and interaction?’  

With bodies entangled in cardboard boxes, this child’s play is both open to possibilities and presented with obstacles. The figures in the paintings are sometimes suspended in a moment of pause, sometimes actively manoeuvring and reaching. The focus for Harper is the emotional, psychological and physical shifts that we make when our bodies and environments change and these works invite us to explore and reimagine the relationships between our bodies and the environments we navigate. 

Marion Harper, I imagine you as everything you are, 2023, oil on timber panel, Marion Harper, I am turning in all directions 2024, oil on timber panel