Olivia Arnold

Olivia Arnold is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sydney. Since completing a BFA (printmaking) and MFA (drawing) at the National Art School, Arnold has developed a practice that has a strong focus on materiality. Meditative mark making with pencil and thread connects to her process driven background in printmaking, and continued exploration of drawing.

 Arnold’s work is primarily site specific; in that she engages with and observes the elements within her surroundings. By documenting architecture, interior space, and the changing light within these scenes, Arnold situates her body and perspective within the work. This allows a practice that fully immerses her in the act of looking.

Arnold’s practice is exploratory and series-based. This approach allows a freedom of experimentation in the translation of conceptual material.

Arnold’s most recent projects have evolved around concepts of home and her experience as a woman in domestic space. Her MFA centred around perceptions of safety and the uncanny sense of ease and discomfort that women experience in domestic environments. There is a familiarity and historical significance to women’s place and activities in the home, that provides connection to previous generations, paired with a feeling of entrapment.

During recent experiences of lockdown and prolonged periods indoors, Arnold has continued to grapple with this juxtaposition within her artmaking. She has documented moments of tranquility, and explored traditional feminine craft, such as quilting. Across her varied work, common threads of obsessive repetition connect back to a relentless banality of domestic life, while referencing the meditative nature of mark making and needlework. The depiction of endless loops of time in her animation, simultaneously frantic and reflective, enforces this narrative of domestic discomfort.

Arnold’s use of a limited palette alludes to a traditional colour pairing seen in toile fabrics, and gives an ambiguity to the time of day depicted in her work. The vibrant ultramarine is seen in various forms, scribed into, documenting interior scenes and architectural form, sewn and etched, hidden behind a veil of rice paper, and expressively worked with pastel hundreds of times to form an animation.