TULLY ARNOT // IS ANNOUNCED AS A FINALIST TO JOHN FRIES 2015, LAUNCHES POZIBLE CAMPAIGN AND A VIDEO INTERVIEW

Congratulations to Tully Arnot, who has been announced a finalist to the John Fries Award 2015, one of Australia and New Zealand's most covetable awards for emerging contemporary artists.

Tully Arnot is, indisputably, one of Australia's busiest practicing artists. Since picking up the Inaugural NAB Private Wealth Emerging Artist Award in association with Art Month Sydney in September, he has presented numerous solo exhibitions (including Trace Etc at Artereal gallery in March 2015) and group exhibitions. In March, he was also awarded the prestigious Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship, awarding the artist $20,000 over two years.  

As part of his solo exhibition, Trace Etc, at Artereal Gallery, Tully spoke In Conversation with Sydney Contemporary 15 Director, Barry Keldoulis and was also filmed providing further insight into the work in this exhibition from his studio at Redfern's 107 Projects (available to view above).

This week, Tully Arnot also launched a Pozible campaign in a bid to raise money for a project, Digital Forest, that he would like to get off the ground for Underbelly Arts 2015.

In his explanation on the crowdsourcing platform, Arnot elaborates on his intentions for the project: 

"Digital Forest is a new sculptural installation created for Underbelly Arts Festival 2015 on Cockatoo Island, Sydney. The artwork will consist of 300+ 'robotic' plants which use light sensors, servo motors and Arduino micro-controllers to create an interactive relationship between the audience and this electronic foliage.

This installation develops on a previous work Nervous Plants, winner of the 2014 NAB Private Wealth Emerging Artist Award. The new work will refine the technology that I developed in that work, as well as increase the complexity of the interactive components and greatly expand the scale of the work. "

TULLY ARNOT // WINNER OF THE 2015 MARTEN BEQUEST TRAVELLING SCHOLARSHIP

 Tully Arnot_Lonely Sculpture_2014_servo motor, microcontroller, programming, cast silicone, perspex,

cable ties, glue, electronics, iPhone 4, Tinder app_edition of 12 + 2 AP_25 x 30 x 5cm

Congratulations to Tully Arnot who was recently announced as one of the 2015 winners of the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship! 

The Marten Bequest is awarded annually to selected young artists across a number of categories including painting and sculpture. Winners of the award are presented with a $20,000 scholarship intended to provide them with the chance to explore, study and develop their artistic gifts through travelling either overseas or interstate. 

Tully Arnot will begin his travels in Australia by creating work for an upcoming exhibition at Brisbane Powerhouse, followed by inaugural solo exhibitions in Melbourne and New Zealand. Tully will then collaborate with Chinese-Australian artist Jason Phu to establish a large studio in Chongqing, where he will develop the complexity and scale of his work. He will later take up an Australia Council residency at the Greene Street studio in New York, where he will undertake a mentorship and expand his international networks. 

Tully Arnot is a Sydney based contemporary artist whose practice develops on ‘outsider’ modes of invention, generating a non-teleological creative process with unanticipated outcomes. Inventive and alchemical explorations of material and form are used to explore the subtle changing of states within art - from everyday object to sculpture/invention/artwork, or stuck between in a state of flux. In 2014 Arnot was awarded the inaugural NAB Emerging Artist Award for his installation of kinetic based sculptures Nervous Plants. In 2013 Arnot was also selected as one of three artists to undertake a residency as part of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art's inaugural Beijing Studio Program at the studios of Chinese Australian artist Shen Shaomin in Huairou on the northern outskirts of Beijing. This residency culminated in an exhibition of new work, entitled Haze, which featured the work of Tully Arnot, Sarah Contos and Jensen Tjhung held at 4A in 2014. 

Arnot's work has also been exhibited as part of Installation Contemporary at Sydney Contemporary Art Fair in 2013 and at the Museum of Contemporary Art as part of an edition of MCA Art Bar which Arnot was invited to curate. He has previously exhibited as part of the Next Wave Festival (2012), the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2011, 2014) and the Redlands Art Prize (2014). 

Tully Arnot is currently exhibiting a selection of new and recent works as part of his solo exhibition Trace Etc. at Artereal Gallery. The exhibition runs until 28 March 2015 as part of Art Month Sydney.