↳ Exhibitions

Darcey Bella Arnold at ReadingRoom

February 9, 2021

Artist: Darcey Bella Arnold

Exhibition title: me say edit be

Venue: ReadingRoom, Melbourne, Australia

Date: November 7 – December 12, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and ReadingRoom, Melbourne

ReadingRoom is pleased to announce me say edit be, an exhibition of paintings by Darcey Bella Arnold. This is the artist’s inaugural solo exhibition at the gallery.

Darcey Bella Arnold, a current Studio Artist at Gertrude Contemporary, is one of seven early-career artists in the running for the prestigious John Fries Award. Over the past few years, her work has developed a particular interest in the relationship between language and painting. Language and its accompanying technological applications, can reveal barriers that inhibit and thresholds that release. As receivers of language, we are constantly finding ways to arrange and rearrange what we see and hear in order to move beyond and between these limitations in search of appropriate transmissions bridging the space between us. Arnold’s work is a cartographic exploration of this space, in particular the relation between herself and her mother, for whom she cares.

Painting too is a language. Like writing, it aims to speak beyond itself at risk of erasing the very memory it wishes to preserve. Arnold’s acrylic paintings carefully and poetically translate collected remnants documenting her mother Jenny’s unique experience with observing, forgetting and remembering words, be they spoken or printed. These are intimate paintings, including slips-of-tongues, inappropriate equivocations, and poetic puns. Sometimes, we read Arnold’s renderings of her mother’s diacritic hand as being bi-lingual in form. Mapping her mother’s relation to language and memory these diagrammatic works are personal, not private and reveal a gentle gestural abstraction which text can become.

Paralleled with an essay by Matthew Greaves, these paintings can be seen in may say edit be, Arnold’s first solo exhibition with ReadingRoom, Melbourne.

To quote Darcey via Jenny — applaud x a’pplaud.

— Lisa Radford

Darcey Bella Arnold (b. 1986) is an Australian, Melbourne-based artist of British and Scottish descent. Darcey completed a BFA, Drawing at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne (2007), and a BFA, Honours at Monash University, Melbourne (2009). A selection of recent exhibitions includes: My Mother’s Labour, Sutton Gallery Project Space, Melbourne (2018); Folded brick, Darcey Bella Arnold and Deimantas Narkevičius (LTU) organised by Paulius Andriuškevičius and Nicholas Kleindienst, Neon Parc Project Space, 215 Albion St, Brunswick, Melbourne (2018); and Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, Testing Grounds, Melbourne Arts Precinct (2017). Darcey’s curatorial projects include Duck on the Pond, involving artists Elena Betros López, Noriko Nakamura, Lisa Radford, Salote Tawale, Roberta Joy Rich and Kalinda Vary at an offsite location in Melbourne (2018); and Bricklaying with artists Dan Moynihan, Georgina Cue and Adam Wood at Rearview Gallery Project Space, Melbourne (2017. Darcey has been a finalist in the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize (2019) and the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize (2018). She attended an Artist-In-Residence program with Eastside International (ESXLA) Los Angeles (2016), and was included in Kimposium, a social sciences symposium curated by Dr Meredith Jones at Brunel University, London (2015). A 2020 Gertrude Studio Artist, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, Darcey was selected as a finalist in the John Fries Award 2020, with a forthcoming exhibition as part of the award, curated by Miriam Kelly, at UNSW Galleries, Sydney (September, 2020).