WITH his new film Edge of Tomorrow screened across Sydney this week, and his art exhibition opening yesterday in Woollahra, all that’s missing of Noah Taylor is the man himself.

The British-based Australian actor is holed up in Manchester and Liverpool shooting the second series of the TV drama Peaky Blinders. So Taylor left it to his childhood chum Claudia Karvan to open his exhibition in his absence.

Karvan did the honours at Olsen Irwin Works on Paper, Small Paintings and Sculpture yesterday. Taylor has been a well-known actor since 1987 when he starred in The Year My Voice Broke. But it was Claudia who introduced Taylor to her friend Tim Olsen, son of the great John Olsen, who partners Rex Irwin in the Olsen Irwin galleries in the eastern suburbs. Olsen Irwin gave Taylor his first exhibition last year. This second exhibition, titled New Works, is a series of drawings in ink on paper.

It’s a medium in which Taylor says he can work quickly to record his subconscious thoughts.

“They (the images) are like stills or frames from a comic and I’m not really aware of the bigger story — they’re just elements in there,” Taylor said.

He thought the current works were “darker” than those in his first exhibition.

“Sex and violence are staples of the arts. They are classical,” he said.

Taylor worked alongside Tom Cruise on Edge Of Tomorrow. “He’s a really nice fellow,” Taylor said.