Darcey Bella Arnold
Darcey Bella Arnold My Mother’s Labour
11 August –1 September 2018
Sutton Projects is pleased to present My Mother’s Labour, a solo exhibition by Darcey Bella Arnold.
Arnold’s works explore labour, particularly the parallel between artistic production and the creation and upkeep of the home. Employing both utilitarian and decorative materials such as house paint and upholstery fabric, Arnold paints the textured facades of the familiar brick veneer home, a staple of Australian residential architecture.
These flat, hard-edge paintings are layered with references to interior domestic settings and playful, scaled-up depictions of hand-written notes, alluding to household social dynamics. By fusing the internal with the external, the public with the private, Arnold points to narratives that are at once personal and political.
Alongside these paintings sit figurative works of women making art, sketched by Arnold’s mother and then reinterpreted by the artist. In doing so, the physical and emotional labour of both mother and daughter is used to position the house as a vessel for speaking about art making, feminism and storytelling.
Darcey Bella Arnold is an Australian, Melbourne based artist of British and Scottish descent. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2008, and a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) at Monash University in 2009.
A selection of recent exhibitions include: Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, Testing Grounds, Melbourne Arts Precinct, 2017; Cat Cracker (or catalytic cracker), Stockroom Gallery, Kyneton, curated by Jason Waterhouse, 2016; New but Nah, M16 Artspace, Canberra, curated by Liz Errol, 2015; Light the blue touchpaper and retire, BACC, Biannual Emerging Artist Exhibition with artists: Adam John Cullen, Saskia Doherty and Matthew Greaves, curated by Julie Skate, 2015; Paper, Rock, Scissors, Tristian Koenig with artists: Ry David Bradley and Andre Hemer, 2015.
Arnold’s curatorial projects include Duck on the Pond, involving artists Elena Betros López, Noriko Nakamura, Lisa Radford, Darcey Bella Arnold, Salote Tawale, Roberta Joy Rich and Kalinda Vary at an offsite location in Melbourne, 2018, and Bricklayingwith artists Dan Moynihan, Georgina Cue and Adam Wood at Rearview Gallery Project Space, Melbourne, 2017.
In 2018 Arnold was shortlisted for the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize. She attended an Artist-In-Residence program with Eastside International (ESXLA), Los Angeles in 2016 and was also included in Kimposiuma social sciences symposium curated by Dr. Meredith Jones at Brunel University, London.