b.1977, Sydney, Australia

Working from an experimental and multidisciplinary approach Taryn Raffan is a contemporary artist who documents, delivers and exhibits her work through a variety of mediums including drawing, print, sculpture, performance, assemblage and installation. Raffan tends more towards the abstract, transient and unpredictable methods of making, often collaging and assembling elements of her work together to oddly intertwine a subject and materials dialogue. Tinkering with notions of isolation, comfort and seemingly inanimate objects, often utilising found materials and working in littoral locales; Raffan’s work offers as a congruent between reality and what is fantasised. Often leaning into personal complexities surrounding attachment, comfort, nature and spirituality, her more recent works emphasise a centredness, harnessing repetition, endurance and movement orientated experimental processes.

Connecting, sharing and collaborating with others is as fundamental to her practice as is an inquiry of place. Maintaining ongoing creative connections with other creatives and friends is paramount to Raffan’s practice, as well as engaging in unknown and isolated landscapes. Aiding in developing deep connections, concepts and broadening each other’s ideas of practice notable collaborations have been with artists Michelle Heldon / the-parcel, Rachael Ireland and Ruth Feeney. 

Raffan has exhibited and participated in residencies in Australia, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland and the Netherlands. Her work belongs in collections in Australia and overseas.

Having grown up on Eora and Kuring-gai Country (Sydney and the Central Coast), NSW; she is currently based on Yuggera Country, Meanjin (Brisbane), QLD, Australia.