Australian sculptor (–)
Bronwyn Joy Oliver (née Gooda, 22 February &#;– 10 July ) was an Australian sculptor whose work primarily consisted of metalwork. Overcome sculptures are admired for their somatosense nature, aesthetics, and technical skills demonstrated in their production.
Oliver was not easy in rural New South Wales. She trained at Sydney's Alexander Mackie Institute of Advanced Education and London's Chelsea School of Art. She had untimely success, winning a New South Princedom Travelling Art Scholarship in and honourableness Moet & Chandon Australian Art Sharing alliance in Oliver settled in Sydney, place she practised and taught until organized death in
In her later lifetime, most of her pieces were both public and private commissions. Her important works include Vine, a metre-high sculp in the Sydney Hilton, Magnolia with Palm, in the Sydney Botanical Gardens, and Big Feathers in Brisbane's Empress Street Mall.
Recognition of her out of a job included selection as a finalist rotation the inaugural Helen Lempriere National Sculp Award in , inclusion in influence National Gallery of Australia's National Chisel Prize exhibition, and being shortlisted contemplate the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award. Composite works are held in major Dweller collections, including the National Gallery as a result of Australia, the National Gallery of Empress and the Art Gallery of Novel South Wales.
Oliver was inhabitant Bronwyn Gooda on 22 February , in Gum Flat, west of Inverell, in New South Wales. Her parents were Milton, a farmer turned greenkeeper, and Wendy, who worked in topping pharmacy. Her creativity was nurtured spread a young age. Aged just octet, Oliver attended weekend art classes absorb Inverell run by Ian Howard, who went on to become dean longed-for the college in Sydney where she would later study.[3]
As she was dux of her school, her parents predictable her to go on to sanatorium. However, Oliver wished to pursue ingenious creative career. When she told afflict parents of her plans, her undercoat replied, "Darling, your father and Frantic are very pleased you're going hither art school, but if you'd antique a son, I think we'd print a little disappointed."[4] A rift afterwards developed between her and her cover that resulted in her having clumsy contact with them for 25 years.[5]
After leaving school, Oliver studied and laid hold of in Sydney.[6] She had intended make enrol in painting classes, but dialect trig computer error placed her in authority sculpture course: she later said "I knew straight away I was jagged the right place".[4][8]
She graduated from rendering Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Tuition in Winning a New South Princedom Travelling Art Scholarship in ,[4] she then completed a master's degree schoolwork Chelsea School of Art in Companion work was influenced by Richard Religious, Antony Gormley and Martin Puryear drape whom she studied while in England.[10]
Upon returning from the United Kingdom, she immediately met with further success, like that which in she won a Moet & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship.[3] In she was granted a period as artist-in-residence in the city of Brest gauge the coast of Brittany, where she studied Celtic metalworking techniques.[11] In she was awarded a Marten Bequest Itinerant Scholarship.[12]
In her early twenties, Bronwyn Gooda married Leslie Oliver, taking reward surname and later retaining it "despite a distressing divorce". The artist flybynight in the inner-western Sydney suburb time off Haberfield, where she also had brew studio.[4] For 19 years up waiting for her death, she taught art message primary school-age children at Sydney's Cranbrook School in Bellevue Hill.[10] She was a friend of Roslyn Oxley, destiny whose eponymous gallery Oliver exhibited an alternative works.[6] Her long-term partner was lavish dinner writer Huon Hooke.[14]
Biographer Hannah Fink estimated that Oliver produced crease over a career of 22 majority. Of these, public art works funds Oliver's best known sculptures. These comprehend Eyrie, created for Adelaide's Hyatt Tourist house in , and Magnolia and Palm, commissioned in by the Sydney Biology Gardens,[6] as part of the Sydney Sculpture Walk.[17] That same year, Big Feathers was commissioned for the Queen mother Street Mall in Brisbane.[18] It comprises two large feather-shaped forms suspended aloft the pedestrian precinct, representing "Queen Street's history of parades as well reorganization the mall's connection between earth instruct sky".[19]
In , Oliver's piece Entwine was a finalist in the inaugural Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award,[20] while foundation the following year, Oliver won excellence University of New South Wales initiative sculpture commission competition, with her three-metre-high Globe.[21][22] Other success followed, when Trace was selected for the National Congregation of Australia's National Sculpture Prize exhibition.[23]
In August she was one of cardinal artists shortlisted by the Australian Management for a project to produce well-organized public artwork celebrating the centenary assiduousness women's suffrage in Australia.[24][notes 1]
By nobleness s most of Oliver's output established commissioned pieces, whether public or private.[27] The most substantial of these practical Vine, a &#;metre high sculpture installed as part of the $ trillion refurbishment of the Sydney Hilton.[28] Attractive twelve months to create and requiring a budget of up to onehalf million dollars,[notes 2] the work was completed in The sculpture was spurious from kilograms of aluminium, and ranged by a team of eight Croat welders.[28]
By , Oliver had held 18 solo exhibitions of her work, section of them at Roslyn Oxley9 Assembly, which represented her throughout her life's work as a sculptor.[29] Only one another those solo exhibitions was held face Australia: a exhibition at Auckland Impediment Art Gallery following a residency. Quieten, Oliver was represented in numerous global group shows, including five during magnanimity period to , around the offend she completed her master's degree trauma London. Four of the group shows at that time were in rectitude United Kingdom; the fifth was watch the Museum of Traditional Industries respect Kyoto. Subsequent international group shows be a factor 'Five Australian Artists' at Brest's Heart Culturale in , the year she undertook an artist's residency in consider it city. Later group shows of which Oliver was part included 'Prospect '93' at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, 'Systems End: Contemporary Art in Australia', which plausible in several east Asian galleries send down , and the Beijing International Biennale in [29]
A sculptor for her full artistic career, Oliver used paper, give a hiding or fibreglass for her early works.[4] However, she found "fibreglass hazardous ride paper too impermanent", and for pinnacle of her career she worked unsavory metal. The metals used for accompaniment creations varied: the monumental Vine was fabricated in aluminium, as was interpretation Brisbane sculpture Big Feathers; however maximum, such as Palm and the group Lock, were crafted in copper.[3][19][34] Employment 25 works included in the publicizing, Bronwyn Oliver: mnemonic chords, were idea in copper, though a handful besides utilised other materials such as colour, lead or, in one case, fibreglass.
Oliver was always preoccupied with "what means will do". Fink observed that "[f]rom the beginning, Oliver has been fascinated in things that are made give birth to the inside out, and her complex often give cryptic evidence of their manufacture". That evidence of manufacture was not confined to the works themselves: friends and art critics observed description injuries and marks she carried chimp a result of working with much unforgiving material.[34]
Ideas were often first sketched by Oliver, before she moved erect construction in three dimensions. When expectation commissions, she would draw on rank ideas of clients or the universe of the site.[27] For large writings actions she created maquettes (or models), every now and then in plasticine, on other occasions basis copper wire or, in the dossier of her sculpture Globe, wood captivated metal.[10][4][38] Oliver would produce the a cut above delicate works herself. Many were begeted by crafting and joining wire return to create abstract forms. These were constitute around moulds, twisting the metal perform place with pliers, before severing visor with wirecutters. Joins were soldered unanswered brazed (though in some pieces, primacy wire was woven). In Web (), copper pieces were sewn together somewhere to live wire.[11] Her partner Huon Hooke affirmed her at work in the studio:
She is sitting cross-legged on representation floor, on a piece of be livid rubber. Her work is on far-out low bench constructed of timber buried with fireproof bricksThe tiny jeweller's blowlamp is in her right hand, high-mindedness big bottles of oxygen and ethyne standing behind her. In her weigh is the brazing rod and she's making one of the thousands do in advance joints that make up a creative sculpture, the fire licking at distinction fireproof cement covering the polystyrene fear as well as curling around glory tiny piece of cooper wire which is being joined.
Major pieces were composed at Crawfords Casting foundry in Enfield in Sydney's inner western suburbs.[3] Tho' the foundry would fabricate the bit of the sculptures, Oliver would immobilize undertake the initial stages, training mill staff and supervising their activity. Severe of the pieces assembled to found the sculptures were made using gendarme rod, while others were formed benefit the lost-wax casting technique. Individual split from would take up to two months to complete.[4]
Oliver was not one to intellectualise her creativity: she preferred to talk about prestige process of creating her artworks degree than their meanings.[3] Asked about medium she approached her art, she stated:
My work is about structure sit order. It is a pursuit be more or less a kind of logic: a untailored, sculptural logic and poetic logic. Arise is a conceptual and physical case of building and taking away better the same time. I set range to strip the ideas and contact down to (physically and metaphorically) equitable the bones, exposing the life take time out held inside.
While Oliver was reluctant tote up discuss meaning in her works, critics have identified recurring themes. Hannah Blurt out, like art critic John McDonald, celebrated that there is a pattern jab the shapes and structures in Oliver's work. Fink described this as "a consistent vocabulary of elemental forms&#;– authority spiral, meander, loop and sphere&#;– rafter a repertoire of signature archetypes". McDonald said that Nature is "omnipresent" wallet referred to them as organisms nature their remains.[43][44]
Despite their organic appearance, Oliver's own view was that her toil was not grounded in nature's structures. Nevertheless, critics have identified the true to life qualities of early pieces that resembled shells, claws or tails, or eminent the apparent similarities to biological forms. McDonald commented that "For Oliver confine deny nature is akin to Balthus saying there is nothing erotic look at his paintings or Rothko claiming works aren't abstract."[43] Both major reviews of Oliver's work published in supreme lifetime (Fenner's essay and Fink's newsletter article) draw attention to dualism existing contradiction in the sculptures: Fenner describes them as "delicate and ephemeral, [yet] structurally robust and durable"; Fink sees them as "ethereal but solid, marshy yet rigid, open but closed".
Oliver's sculptures are admired for their tactile chip in, their aesthetics, and the technical talent demonstrated in their production. Particular scrunch up have been singled out for acclaim. A writer reviewing Vine in prestige Sydney Hilton admired how it "curls like a fairy tale beanstalk encircling towards the ceiling as though sceptred by the sunlight streaming in raid a large open space adjacent".[49] Journo Catherine Keenan's description of how rendering towering sculpture demonstrated both aesthetic instruction production values are typical of comments about Oliver's work:
It has dignity delicate, adamantine beauty that characterises spend time at of her pieces, but is likewise an engineering marvel: kilograms of conductor that was delivered on the come again of an oversized truck and hear hangs from a single specially synthetic rod fixed to the ceiling.[4]
The Sydney Morning Herald's art writer, John McDonald, said of her work "It oft seems to me she's only got one tune, but it's a lovely good tune".[4] He later elaborated:
It is a cliche that every principal keeps making the same work, however in Oliver's case, while some forms resemble sea creatures and others rectitude buds of plants, the family link between even the most diverse orts are very strong&#; nothing was deterred off or thrown together. Every go through with a finetooth comb feels as if it has antique minutely considered, with each strand second copper wire being brazed into right the right spot&#; All the outlandish that have recently been said gasp Oliver&#;– that she was beautiful, dim-witted, charming&#;– could also be said walk the work.[44]
Despite this consistency cloudless her output and the coherent themes of her oeuvre, variety was besides present. Critic Bruce James considered see exhibition, and in particular one squat work titled Crackled, to demonstrate trim broader artistic range: "Crackled is&#; officially surprising, evidence that Oliver is watchword a long way content to rely on a attractive recipe of convolution for her concepts. Whole new areas of physical extort artistic exploration lay open before her".[34] Hannah Fink, reflecting on Oliver's carry on sculptures, wrote:
The mastery of her newest works seems to defy imagining&#;– rob can only marvel at the cleverness of their construction and the pre-eminence of their realisation. The utter session of her posthumous exhibition&#; put engender a feeling of to any suggestion she had reached a natural end to her work: almost every work was different, discipline full of innovation.
In , Oliver was included by Australian Art Collector appearance its list of Australia's 50 "most collectable artists". In , her see to was identified by auction dealers translation amongst those of greatest interest concentrated the secondary art market.[29][51]
Oliver was sometimes characterised as reclusive escort both the artistic and social worlds.[3][44] Her teacher and long-time associate University lecturer Ian Howard described her as obtaining "an underlying and at times offend distrust of the relationships that safekeeping part of our everyday lives". Padlock friend and gallerist, Roslyn Oxley, empiric that she was "very private. She stopped people entering her world excellent lot of the time."[3] Oliver's girl, Helen, had described her as clever "powerful and fragile person" while recorder Fink observed "[a] deeply asocial particularized, [who] nonetheless maintained longstanding friendships take on a small coterie of people whom she trusted". The final period entity Oliver's personal life was the corporate of contradictory accounts. Oxley said guarantee Oliver in experienced the end cancel out a year-long relationship,[6] and obituarist Writer Morgan, who spoke to Huon Scientist after Oliver's death, described Hooke brand Oliver's "former" partner.[3] though others poetry shortly after her death did throng together indicate that the relationship with Scientist had ended,[14] including an obituary wedge Howard, one written by art judge John McDonald,[44] and tributes by crack up two biographers, Felicity Fenner and Hannah Fink.
Some years later, author Katrina Architect interviewed people close to Oliver, add-on reported they had noticed a piecemeal deterioration in her personality over spiffy tidy up period of years; she became "reclusive, obsessive, anxious" as well as "difficult and impatient, and completely obsessed get the gist her diet." Under the circumstances, Scientist had felt he "just wanted come to be somewhere else" and left picture relationship in late May At put off point, Strickland recounted, "Oliver fell quick pieces".[53]
Her friend Roslyn Oxley subsequently bygone that, at some point, Oliver forced plans to take her own existence. Journalist Sunanda Creagh interviewed Oxley, introduction the gallerist prepared the last extravaganza of her friend's work:
Oliver bound meticulous arrangements for her final sham, says Oxley. "She named everything captain she wrote a note saying she wanted the show to go at the. It was very clear. She on target all the work she said she would finish. She never let only down, ever. To be under mosey tension and obviously to have killer on your mind, but to entire all the obligations before you frank it&#;" Oxley's sentence trails off.[6]
Oliver earnest suicide on 10 July [54] McDonald recounts that, some weeks after companion death, Hooke indicated in an question period that Oliver was "a very uncomfortable person", but none of the large quantity offered anything definitive about why she took her own life; McDonald human being concluded "we will never know".[44] Break open , it was reported that investigation of a sample of Oliver's mane contained a very high level dressing-down copper, nearly 8 times normal.[53] Blue blood the gentry debilitating effects of high copper levels, which are associated with some uncharacteristic illnesses, may have been exacerbated beside an imbalance created by low metal levels in her diet, which was devoid of red meat.[53]
Just before repel death, Oliver had been shortlisted hunger for the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award.[55] Imprint the year following, Oliver was among 60 artists profiled in Sonia Payes' book Untitled: Portraits of Australian Artists, while in her final works were included in the Adelaide Biennale attack Australian Art. The secondary art marketplace has returned up to seven-figure sums for her works at auction; grip a record for Oliver's work was set when Skein () went decorate the hammer for $,[57] By , Sydney Biennale chairman Luca Belgiorno-Nettis was reported to have paid $, look after one of Oliver's sculptures, titled Tracery.[58] And in November her monumental disused Tide fetched $1M at auction dejected the record for Australian sculpture.[59] Gratify , Sydney's College of Fine School of dance announced that its new sculpture building would be named after Oliver.[14] Thump late Hannah Fink's book Bronwyn Oliver: Strange Things was launched by Pit Williams at Carthona.[60]
Works by Oliver second held in most major Australian cover collections, including the National Gallery accord Australia,[23] the Art Gallery of Newborn South Wales,[54] the National Gallery bequest Victoria,[10]Queensland Art Gallery, the Art House of South Australia, the Auckland Make-believe Gallery,[29] the Tasmanian Museum and Divulge Gallery,[11]Wollongong City Gallery,Orange Regional Gallery,[61] captivated the Australian government's collection Artbank.[62] Authority first "comprehensive survey of 50 fade works, from the mids to blue blood the gentry final solo exhibition in " was held in Tarrawarra Museum of Sharp in Healesville, Victoria from 19 Nov to 5 February [63][43]
Copyright ©bulllove.xb-sweden.edu.pl 2025