2009 ARLENE TEXTAQUEEN: COMFORTABLE

EXHIBITION IMAGES

Introducing an exciting new addition to Sullivan & Strumpf - Australia’s felt-tip super-heroine, Arlene TextaQueen. With the perfect solo show to complement this year’s provocative Sydney Mardi Gras festival, Arlene TextaQueen presents a selection of quirky, intimate drawings of feisty female nudes in her first solo exhibition with Sullivan & Strumpf Fine Art.

After re-discovering her childhood devotion to the felt tip marker, a medium that most Australians know as the humble ‘Texta’, Arlene has dedicated herself to drawing female “Textanudes” for over a decade. Each Textanude is an intimate and collaborative exchange between herself and the women Arlene chooses to draw, some of whom include performers and sex-workers. In a location of her subject’s desire they together choose accessories, props and poses that reflect their character.


"Textanudes are a fresh take on portraiture, fusing aspects of the burlesque and the political, intermixing modes of vunerability and empowerment and capturing individual and collective expressions of feminist and queer subjectivity." Josa Da Silva, artwriter 2008


Arlene TextaQueen graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Australia in 1995 and later studied Interactive Multimedia at Metro Screen in Sydney, graduating in 1998 with a Certificate II in Arts. Since graduating, TextaQueen has exhibited widely in group and solo shows around Australia and abroad, including shows in Amsterdam, Belgium and the United States.


In 2008, TextaQueen was showcased in the major group exhibition, Contemporary Australia: Optimism, at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, and she was a finalist in the National Works on Paper exhibition at the Mornington Peninsular Regional Gallery. In 2002 she was a finalist in the Dobell Drawing Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and also exhibited in Primavera 2002 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.


TextaQueen has completed several important residencies throughout her career, including an Australia Council residency in New York in 2005. She has brought her Textanudes to life in animation for the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, SBS TV Australia and the Australian Centre for Moving Image. Her work has also been woven into tapestry by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop then auctioned for the Clean Ocean Foundation at Christie’s Auction House.