| Arnie Arnold is an Australian artist who works on the fringes of Sydney’s art, design and fashion communities. He boasts a prolific and diverse practice that blurs the lines between commercialism and art. He explains, “I have gone from photography to painting, to making sculpture from found objects, to making chandeliers out of sneakers for Dunlop, customized surfboards for Insight and women’s heels for Melissa Brazil.” A certain graphic and distinctive style flows between Arnold’s diverse work, which is influenced by popular culture and the seductive power of commercial imagery. |  |
Dreamscapes – Freya Ververis
Arnie Arnold is an Australian artist who works on the fringes of Sydney’s art, design and fashion communities. He boasts a prolific and diverse practice that blurs the lines between commercialism and art. He explains, “I have gone from photography to painting, to making sculpture from found objects, to making chandeliers out of sneakers for Dunlop, customized surfboards for Insight and women’s heels for Melissa Brazil.”
A certain graphic and distinctive style flows between Arnold’s diverse work, which is influenced by popular culture and the seductive power of commercial imagery. In his paintings, he attempts to reflect the complexity and contradictions of contemporary society by depicting the inanity, ugliness and occasional beauty found in the urban environment.
The use of bold colours and shapes in Arnie Arnold’s work originates from his background as a professional sign writer. The influence of his commercial work as it crosses into his artistic practice allows for the use of the tools of mass culture and commodification to critique contemporary society.
It is through the artist’s choice of a trademark, candy-coated palette and subject matter such as port-a-loo’s, photo booths and eskies, that he begins to represent the follies of a modern world.
Arnold similarly attempts to juxtapose real and virtual worlds, that is, the realm of the everyday with the consumer fantasy, encouraging the viewer to enter a world somewhere between the mundane and the surreal.
A fascination with memory and notions of childhood innocence filter through an adult sensibility and act as devices that enable Arnold’s work to represent consumerism, desire and to reconstruct the imaginary world of the consumer. The use of candy store colours to depict the sometimes “in your face” subject matter has a disquieting effect on the viewer. The use of familiar images of the everyday in such bold colour provides immediate access for the viewer, but it soon becomes apparent that there is a darker message. Arnie explains, “Pop culture irony lies beneath the surface of my work. Images and objects are rearranged, a mix of found consumer cast-offs create boundless, fanciful realities that bleed together within my paintings, collages and objects, leaving the viewer to contemplate the meaning.”
Arnold also acknowledges the influence in his work of the hyped and profane style of the Young British Art movement and even Japanese Neo-Pop, which espouses a heritage of Warhol and American Pop Art while attempting to be pointedly anchored in Australia and working to find a way for the success of contemporary Australian art.
This artist’s commitment to the Australian contemporary art scene is exemplified by his involvement as co-director of Sydney’s Blank Space Gallery, an artist-run space based in the inner city suburb of Surry Hills. Blank Space has an established history of representing emerging artists and actively promoting innovation within the arts.
