About

Marion Flanagan is a multi-disciplinary Canadian artist working in Toronto and London UK. Her work moves between sculpture, painting, photography, and installation, always considering the materiality of the chosen medium and its potential for narrative expression.

​

Flanagan’s practice investigates the fragile relationship between humans and nature, the uses and abuses of resources and spaces, and attempts to define areas of commonality between the bodies of human beings and the substances of the natural world. This research takes in a broad range of specialisms from geography to politics to biology. An insistence on the analysis of petroleum production emerged in her earliest works. In her sculptures - made using synthetic rubber, cement, metal, and acrylic - she referenced the movement of toxic materials through the natural world, and into our domestic lives. In painting, Flanagan uses monoprinting as a primary structure on the canvas, and then builds texture and colour in slow abstract forms using paint. The resulting works seem by turns industrial and natural; they are reminiscent of terrain-mapping, surfaces of water, pollution, or images taken from a microscope or drone camera. Her current work juxtaposes natural objects with the materials of the industrial world to highlight our imbalanced relationship with nature.

​

Flanagan’s work attempts to reveal the impact of our actions at a local and global level. In the end, she encourages us to treat our environments and fellow beings with consideration and respect.

​

She completed her MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London (UAL). Flanagan has shown her work extensively in the UK, France, and Canada.