Trea Marshall (she/her) is an artist and picture framer based in Taranaki.

Marshall's practice is material-led and intuitive, unfolding through repeated gestures and motifs. With an interest in the transformation of found images, particularly vintage imagery that may depict landscapes or interiors. With subtle nods to decolonisation and feminism throughout her practice, she makes work in series using fragments from her library of collected ‘bits’ to disrupt familiar narratives and create intentional, playful, often dreamlike compositions. Found materials often drive a series of work with a recent shift into making small clay objects, exploring acrylic paint as a collage binder and using small special objects that can often appear confetti-like or as though they are floating in space.

Marshall completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours at Massey University, Wellington. Her practice has the foundation of mark making, repetition and drawing. Since graduating in 2012, her work has shifted towards the inclusion of found materials while continuing to explore memory, storytelling, history of the land, and the ways images can be deconstructed and reimagined.

Alongside her studio practice, Marshall has worked across film and television, picture framing and in the community arts sector. Her time spent in the central desert managing Tjala Arts, an Aboriginal-owned and governed art centre on the remote APY Lands, continues to inform her practice and life. Her daughter Isla Iluwanti, is named after artist Iluwanti Ken, a significant Ngakari (traditional healer) and one of Australia’s most important contemporary painters. While supporting Anangu artists in the development and exhibition of their work across Australia and Europe, she values the importance of keeping culture strong, storytelling through paint and the significance of art communities.

These varied experiences continue to inform a practice grounded in curiosity, material exploration and the possibilities that emerge through making.