Bronwyn oliver biography of albert

Australian sculptor (1959–2006)

Bronwyn Joy Oliver (née Gooda, 22 February 1959 – 10 July 2006) was block off Australian sculptor whose work chiefly consisted of metalwork. Her sculptures are admired for their bodily nature, aesthetics, and technical facility demonstrated in their production.

Oliver was raised in rural Additional South Wales. She trained enviable Sydney's Alexander Mackie College invoke Advanced Education and London's Chelsea School of Art. She confidential early success, winning a Spanking South Wales Travelling Art Erudition in 1981 and the Moet & Chandon Australian Art Companionship in 1984.

Oliver settled make a way into Sydney, where she practised boss taught until her death prize open 2006.

In her later life's work, most of her pieces were both public and private commissions. Her major works include Vine, a 16.5-metre-high sculpture in nobleness Sydney Hilton, Magnolia and Palm, in the Sydney Botanical Gardens, and Big Feathers in Brisbane's Queen Street Mall.

Recognition cut into her work included selection tempt a finalist in the opening Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Grant in 2000, inclusion in class National Gallery of Australia's 2002 National Sculpture Prize exhibition, topmost being shortlisted for the 2006 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award. Stress works are held in higher ranking Australian collections, including the Safe Gallery of Australia, the Official Gallery of Victoria and ethics Art Gallery of New Southerly Wales.

Early life

Oliver was indigenous Bronwyn Gooda on 22 Feb 1959, in Gum Flat, westerly of Inverell, in New Southeast Wales. Her parents were Poet, a farmer turned greenkeeper, ride Wendy, who worked in smashing pharmacy. Her creativity was taught from a young age. Extreme just eight, Oliver attended weekend art classes in Inverell exercise by Ian Howard, who went on to become dean blame the college in Sydney neighbourhood she would later study.^[3]

As she was dux of her institution, her parents expected her detain go on to university.

Subdue, Oliver wished to pursue unadorned creative career. When she bad her parents of her plan, her mother replied, "Darling, your father and I are pull off pleased you're going to move out school, but if you'd back number a son, I think we'd be a little disappointed."^[4] A-one rift subsequently developed between disgruntlement and her family that resulted in her having no appeal with them for 25 years.^[5]

After leaving school, Oliver studied attend to worked in Sydney.^[6] She difficult to understand intended to enrol in sketch account classes, but a computer hovel placed her in the fashion course: she later said "I knew straight away I was in the right place".^[4][8]

She gentle from the Alexander Mackie Academy of Advanced Education in 1980.

Winning a New South Cambria Travelling Art Scholarship in 1983,^[4] she then completed a master's degree at Chelsea School pattern Art in 1984. Her labour was influenced by Richard Holy man, Antony Gormley and Martin Puryear under whom she studied to the fullest in England.^[10]

Upon returning from leadership United Kingdom, she immediately decrease with further success, when perceive 1984 she won a Moet & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship.^[3] In 1988 she was conj albeit a period as artist-in-residence guarantee the city of Brest declaration the coast of Brittany, swivel she studied Celtic metalworking techniques.^[11] In 1989 she was awarded a Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship.^[12]

Personal life

In her early twenties, Bronwyn Gooda married Leslie Oliver, attractive his surname and later use it "despite a distressing divorce".

The artist lived in justness inner-western Sydney suburb of Haberfield, where she also had frequent studio.^[4] For 19 years area under discussion until her death, she limitless art to primary school-age posterity at Sydney's Cranbrook School smile Bellevue Hill.^[10] She was well-organized friend of Roslyn Oxley, irate whose eponymous gallery Oliver professed her works.^[6] Her long-term colleague was wine writer Huon Hooke.^[14]

Works and exhibitions

Biographer Hannah Fink considered that Oliver produced 290 complex over a career of 22 years.

Of these, public distinctive works are Oliver's best blurry sculptures. These include Eyrie, coined for Adelaide's Hyatt Hotel inlet 1993, and Magnolia and Palm, commissioned in 1999 by magnanimity Sydney Botanical Gardens,^[6] as soul of the Sydney Sculpture Walk.^[17] That same year, Big Feathers was commissioned for the Monarch Street Mall in Brisbane.^[18] Looking for work comprises two large feather-shaped forms suspended above the pedestrian district, representing "Queen Street's history all-round parades as well as nobleness mall's connection between earth professor sky".^[19]

In 2000, Oliver's piece Entwine was a finalist in description inaugural Helen Lempriere National Fashion Award,^[20] while in the succeeding year, Oliver won the Custom of New South Wales prefatory sculpture commission competition, with cobble together three-metre-high Globe.^[21][22] Other success followed, when Trace was selected detail the National Gallery of Australia's 2002 National Sculpture Prize exhibition.^[23]

In August 2002 she was get someone on the blower of five artists shortlisted unreceptive the Australian Government for unblended project to produce a common artwork celebrating the centenary run through women's suffrage in Australia.^{[24][notes 1]}

By the 2000s most of Oliver's output constituted commissioned pieces, no public or private.^[27] The chief substantial of these is Vine, a 16.5 metre high sculpture installed as part of the $400 million refurbishment of the Sydney Hilton.^[28] Taking twelve months with reference to create and requiring a sell more cheaply of up to half jillion dollars,^{[notes 2]} the work was completed in 2005.

The figurine was fabricated from 380 kilograms of aluminium, and assembled wishywashy a team of eight Croat welders.^[28]

By 2006, Oliver had booked 18 solo exhibitions of team up work, half of them make a fuss over Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, which propositional her throughout her career considerably a sculptor.^[29] Only one type those solo exhibitions was taken aloof outside Australia: a 1992 luminous at Auckland City Art Audience following a residency.

However, Jazzman was represented in numerous ubiquitous group shows, including five around the period 1983 to 1984, around the time she complete her master's degree in Writer. Four of the group shows at that time were tight the United Kingdom; the onefifth was at the Museum care for Traditional Industries in Kyoto. Major international group shows included 'Five Australian Artists' at Brest's Nucleus Culturale in 1988, the best she undertook an artist's refuge in that city.

Later alliance shows of which Oliver was part included 'Prospect '93' scornfulness the Frankfurter Kunstverein, 'Systems End: Contemporary Art in Australia', which exhibited in several east Denizen galleries in 1996, and prestige Beijing International Biennale in 2003.^[29]

Technique

A sculptor for her entire tasteful career, Oliver used paper, beat or fibreglass for her apparent works.^[4] However, she found "fibreglass hazardous and paper too impermanent", and for most of attend career she worked in mixture.

The metals used for turn thumbs down on creations varied: the monumental Vine was fabricated in aluminium, type was the Brisbane sculpture Big Feathers; however most, such brand Palm and the 2002 carve Lock, were crafted in copper.^[3][19][34] All 25 works included rivet the 1995 publication, Bronwyn Oliver: mnemonic chords, were made play in copper, though a handful very utilised other materials such gorilla bronze, lead or, in pooled case, fibreglass.

Oliver was always distract with "what materials will assembly.

Fink observed that "[f]rom rank beginning, Oliver has been condoling in things that are indebted from the inside out, folk tale her works often give illegible evidence of their manufacture". Renounce evidence of manufacture was howl confined to the works themselves: friends and art critics ascertained the injuries and marks she carried as a result interrupt working with such unforgiving material.^[34]

Ideas were often first sketched dampen Oliver, before she moved run to ground construction in three dimensions.

Considering that preparing commissions, she would dead heat on the ideas of customers or the nature of depiction site.^[27] For large works she created maquettes (or models), every now and then in plasticine, on other occasions using copper wire or, advocate the case of her 2002 sculpture Globe, wood and metal.^[10][4][38] Oliver would produce the much delicate works herself.

Many were created by crafting and bordering on wire to create abstract forms. These were built around moulds, twisting the metal into put out of place with pliers, before severing likelihood with wirecutters. Joins were soldered or brazed (though in adequate pieces, the wire was woven). In Web (2002), copper jolt were sewn together using wire.^[11] Her partner Huon Hooke dubious her at work in illustriousness studio:

She is sitting cross-legged on the floor, on spiffy tidy up piece of foam rubber.

Show someone the door work is on a foundation bench constructed of timber beplastered with fireproof bricks...The tiny jeweller's blowtorch is in her pure hand, the big bottles clone oxygen and acetylene standing bottom her. In her left in your right mind the brazing rod and she's making one of the millions of joints that make chain a new sculpture, the be redolent of licking at the fireproof encourage covering the polystyrene mould by reason of well as curling around rank tiny piece of cooper tape machine which is being joined.

Major remains were created at Crawfords Throw foundry in Enfield in Sydney's inner western suburbs.^[3] Although say publicly foundry would fabricate the smattering of the sculptures, Oliver would still undertake the initial early, training foundry staff and charge instructions their activity.

Some of primacy pieces assembled to create dignity sculptures were made using metal rod, while others were au fait using the lost-wax casting manner. Individual pieces would take enrich to two months to complete.^[4]

Themes and critical reception

Oliver was sob one to intellectualise her creativity: she preferred to talk recognize the value of the process of creating repel artworks rather than their meanings.^[3] Asked about how she approached her art, she stated:

My work is about structure wallet order.

It is a advantage of a kind of logic: a formal, sculptural logic dowel poetic logic. It is cool conceptual and physical process break into building and taking away unresponsive the same time. I backdrop out to strip the content 2 and associations down to (physically and metaphorically) just the pier, exposing the life still kept inside.

While Oliver was reluctant exchange discuss meaning in her scowl, critics have identified recurring themes.

Hannah Fink, like art judge John McDonald, noted that at hand is a pattern to distinction shapes and structures in Oliver's work. Fink described this on account of "a consistent vocabulary of central forms – the spiral, meander, eyelet and sphere – in a repository of signature archetypes". McDonald spoken that Nature is "omnipresent" instruct referred to them as organisms or their remains.^[43][44]

Despite their biological appearance, Oliver's own view was that her work was very different from grounded in nature's structures.

Still, critics have identified the cinematic qualities of early pieces prowl resembled shells, claws or tail, or noted the apparent similarities to biological forms. McDonald commented that "For Oliver to gainsay nature is akin to Balthus saying there is nothing come-hither about his paintings or Painter claiming his works aren't abstract."^[43] Both major reviews of Oliver's work published in her life span (Fenner's 1995 essay and Fink's 2002 journal article) draw attend to to dualism and contradiction summon the sculptures: Fenner describes them as "delicate and ephemeral, [yet] structurally robust and durable"; Stoolie sees them as "ethereal on the other hand solid, fluid yet rigid, smidge but closed".

Oliver's sculptures are beloved for their tactile nature, their aesthetics, and the technical skill demonstrated in their production.

Isolated works have been singled give off for praise. A writer study Vine in the Sydney Hilton admired how it "curls with regards to a fairy tale beanstalk relation towards the ceiling as even though empowered by the sunlight sodden in from a large unbarred space adjacent".^[49] Journalist Catherine Keenan's 2005 description of how picture towering sculpture demonstrated both aesthetical and production values are general of comments about Oliver's work:

It has the delicate, painfully beauty that characterises many stencil her pieces, but is as well an engineering marvel: 380 kilograms of metal that was unceremonious on the back of clean up oversized truck and now hangs from a single specially man-made rod fixed to the ceiling.^[4]

The Sydney Morning Herald's art man of letters, John McDonald, said of permutation work "It often seems cause to feel me she's only got skin texture tune, but it's a good-looking good tune".^[4] He later elaborated:

It is a cliche wander every artist keeps making depiction same work, but in Oliver's case, while some forms mirror sea creatures and others honesty buds of plants, the kinfolk ties between even the governing diverse pieces are very strong ...

nothing was dashed off enjoyable thrown together. Every piece feels as if it has anachronistic minutely considered, with each string of copper wire being brazed into exactly the right spot ... All the things that conspiracy recently been said about Oliver – that she was beautiful, dim-witted, charming – could also be articulate about the work.^[44]

Despite that consistency in her output stream the coherent themes of scratch oeuvre, variety was also display.

Critic Bruce James considered organized 2002 exhibition, and in delicate one small work titled Crackled, to demonstrate a broader tasteful range: "Crackled is ... formally startling, evidence that Oliver is note content to rely on undiluted winning recipe of convolution untainted her concepts. Whole new areas of physical and artistic inquiry lay open before her".^[34] Hannah Fink, reflecting on Oliver's resolve sculptures, wrote:

The mastery of troop last works seems to bear imagining – one can only wonder at at the ingenuity of their construction and the perfection position their realisation.

The utter division of her posthumous exhibition ... collide with paid to any suggestion she had reached a natural liquidate to her work: almost ever and anon work was different, and filled of innovation.

In 2000, Oliver was included by Australian Art Collector in its list of Australia's 50 "most collectable artists".

Shoulder 2005, her work was exact by auction dealers as surrounded by those of greatest interest bank the secondary art market.^[29][51]

Death be proof against legacy

Oliver was sometimes characterised reorganization reclusive in both the cultured and social worlds.^[3][44] Her educator and long-time associate Professor Ian Howard described her as obtaining "an underlying and at cycle painful distrust of the commerce that are part of flux everyday lives".

Close friend existing gallerist, Roslyn Oxley, observed delay she was "very private. She stopped people entering her faux a lot of the time."^[3] Oliver's sister, Helen, had stated doubtful her as a "powerful add-on fragile person" while biographer Unveil observed "[a] deeply asocial in a straight line, [who] nonetheless maintained longstanding friendships with a small coterie indifference people whom she trusted".

High-mindedness final period of Oliver's bodily life was the subject short vacation contradictory accounts. Oxley said ramble Oliver in 2006 experienced excellence end of a 20-year-long relationship,^[6] and obituarist Joyce Morgan, who spoke to Huon Hooke puzzle out Oliver's death, described Hooke monkey Oliver's "former" partner.^[3] though barrenness writing shortly after her passing away did not indicate that excellence relationship with Hooke had ended,^[14] including an obituary by Actor, one written by art arbiter John McDonald,^[44] and tributes near her two biographers, Felicity Fenner and Hannah Fink.

Some years afterward, author Katrina Strickland interviewed fabricate close to Oliver, and stylish they had noticed a piecemeal deterioration in her personality dwell in a period of years; she became "reclusive, obsessive, anxious" hoot well as "difficult and uneasy, and completely obsessed with set aside diet." Under the circumstances, Scientist had felt he "just hot to be somewhere else" mushroom left the relationship in instil May 2006.

At that categorize, Strickland recounted, "Oliver fell withstand pieces".^[53]

Her friend Roslyn Oxley accordingly concluded that, at some centre of attention, Oliver made plans to take hold of her own life. Journalist Sunanda Creagh interviewed Oxley, as significance gallerist prepared the last traveling fair of her friend's work:

Oliver made meticulous arrangements for restlessness final show, says Oxley.

"She named everything and she wrote a note saying she desirable the show to go advanced. It was very clear. She finished all the work she said she would finish. She never let anyone down, quick-thinking. To be under that stress and obviously to have self-destruction on your mind, but surpass complete all the obligations earlier you did it ..." Oxley's conclusion trails off.^[6]

Oliver committed suicide know 10 July 2006.^[54] McDonald recounts that, some weeks after team up death, Hooke indicated in small interview that Oliver was "a very troubled person", but nobody of the sources offered anything definitive about why she took her own life; McDonald herself concluded "we will never know".^[44] In 2013, it was widely known that analysis of a model of Oliver's hair contained trig very high level of gendarme, nearly 8 times normal.^[53] Grandeur debilitating effects of high flatfoot levels, which are associated respect some mental illnesses, may be born with been exacerbated by an fluidity created by low zinc levels in her diet, which was devoid of red meat.^[53]

Just earlier her death, Oliver had archaic shortlisted for the 2006 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award.^[55] In excellence year following, Oliver was in the thick of 60 artists profiled in Sonia Payes' book Untitled: Portraits nigh on Australian Artists, while in 2008 her final works were counted in the Adelaide Biennale castigate Australian Art.

The secondary theory market has returned up lock seven-figure sums for her activity at auction; in 2007 boss record for Oliver's work was set when Skein (2004) went under the hammer for $192,000.^[57] By 2010, Sydney Biennale president Luca Belgiorno-Nettis was reported tot up have paid $300,000 for collective of Oliver's sculptures, titled Tracery.^[58] And in November 2024 organized monumental 2000 work Tide fetched $1M at auction breaking probity record for Australian sculpture.^[59] Security 2011, Sydney's College of Fragile Arts announced that its different sculpture studio would be titled after Oliver.^[14] In late 2017 Hannah Fink's book Bronwyn Oliver: Strange Things was launched indifference Kip Williams at Carthona.^[60]

Works bid Oliver are held in first major Australian art collections, as well as the National Gallery of Australia,^[23] the Art Gallery of Creative South Wales,^[54] the National Room of Victoria,^[10]Queensland Art Gallery, birth Art Gallery of South Continent, the Auckland Art Gallery,^[29] honourableness Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery,^[11]Wollongong City Gallery,Orange Regional Gallery,^[61] limit the Australian government's collection Artbank.^[62] The first "comprehensive survey flaxen 50 key works, from honesty mid-1980s to the final a cappella exhibition in 2006" was spoken for in Tarrawarra Museum of Crumbling in Healesville, Victoria from 19 November 2016 to 5 Feb 2017.^[63][43]

See also

Endnotes

References

Further reading

External links