Sydney Exhibition

Tyler Arnold

Opens Friday 15 September, 6 – 8pm
Runs 14 – 24 September, 2023

Download a catalogue here.

In his first solo exhibition, Sydney-based artist Tyler Arnold portrays vibrant streetscapes from the Redfern and Chippendale area using on-site oil pastel sketches, which he later translates from hand-drawn to brush-painted forms in studio.

The original on-site drawings possess a textured and immersive quality that mirrors the essence of the suburbs. In his studio, Arnold taps into his memories and experiences of these locations to reimagine urban panoramas on a more expansive and detailed scale, highlighting his exceptional technical prowess as a painter.

Biography

Tyler Arnold lives and works on Gadigal land. With a long list of achievements under his belt, Arnold was most recently Highly Commended for a portrait exhibited in the Naked & Nude Prize (2021), and was selected for the Rick Amour Self Portrait Prize (2019). His work has featured in shows at Michael Reid Gallery (2020) and Saint Cloche (2022), was the recipient of the Norma Bull Portrait Scholarship (2019) and completed residencies in Estonia, Western Australia, and throughout 2019-20 he undertook a two year art residency at the Dunmoochin foundation outside of Melbourne.

In his most recent body of work he has engaged with the environment of the city street, working on site with oil pastels to catch the fleeting movements of passing pedestrians, cars, shop windows, traffic lights and building sites. These works then inform his oil paintings which he makes at home.  

Instagram @tyler.j.arnold

Artist Statement

Each of these works seek to explore an experience of my daily life in the window of time before 9am on weekdays. Every day has a different feeling, due to weather conditions and personal interests. Recently I was wandering around Redfern and didn’t know what to draw, then luckily I came across an image by the Austrian poet Georg Trakl, …dark golden spring days. The line resonated with my experience of that particular morning sitting near the fountain in Redfern Park and suddenly I remembered what to do.