About​

Jessica Waters Gordon (b. 1981) lives and works between Wee Waa and Port Stephens, Australia. She is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in painting, video and installation. Gordon’s practice playfully and critically recontextualises images of authority and power, shifting them into unexpected and often absurd frameworks to unsettle their original meaning. Her paintings reference the visual language of historical leadership portraiture, including formal poses, tailored suits and equestrian symbolism, while deliberately undermining its authority. Men appear perched on childish toys or reduced versions of once powerful symbols such as toy horses, where composure gives way to fatigue, doubt or quiet humour. Whether reworking Botticelli’s young men into blue toned contemporary subjects or performing futile acts like rollerblading across the resistance of sand dunes, Gordon operates between homage and subversion. Her work exposes power as a performance that is constructed, fragile and open to collapse, revealing beauty and humour in its undoing.