Christen Tynan is a Naarm-based, Creative Victoria grant recipient and multidisciplinary visual artist. As metalsmith, sculptor, draftsperson and painter, they draw audiences into beautiful, deeply intimate queered folktales, bizarre magic, ritual, relics, icons and altars.
Tynan emerged as multi-disciplinary visual artist as part of the highly acclaimed keynote Midsumma exhibition, Queer My Head. Under the Creative Victoria Creators Fund 2022 they spent 6 months developing methodologies to represent the diversity of disabled, queer and gender-diverse folklore within their work.
Tynan’s work legitimises and elevates lived experiences which are currently underrepresented by cultural institutions. Their luscious oil paintings invite audiences to celebrate their subjects’ unconventional ingenuity. Exploring this hierarchy of mediums simultaneously demands recognition from and critiques contemporary art and gallery spaces which focus on privileged perspectives.
Tynan’s commitment to community involves engaging with the writings, art and theories of their communities. Their non-institutional education has consisted of a mentorship under Jonas Ropponen and ongoing research at Australian Queer Archives. Their current phase of work considers accessibility of individual practice, for artist, subject and audience, within the development of an individual artist Community Engagement Strategy with consultation from Arts Access Victoria.
From their studio next to 20 overlapping lanes of freeway, Tynan frequently reminisces about a past life of wildlife rescues, forests, and going to school in a paddock.
Tynan lives and works on Wurundjeri land and sky and water. Sovereignty was never ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
