Olivia Bax
Olivia Bax (1988, Singapore) is a sculptor who brings things together, creating ensembles of found and made objects, held together by metal armatures, chicken wire, cardboard and paper pulp. Her handling of these materials runs with and departs from established sculptural processes, simultaneously constructing, welding and modelling, and using the metal armature both as an inner supporting structure and as an active component of the final sculpture itself, pushing through and out of the modelled paper pulp. As well as construct and model, Baxalso paints, but rather than being applied at the end, her paint is mixed into the pulp from the very start. This means that she works with colour both as a painter and as a sculptor might, modelling colour as one might clay. (Jon Wood)
Bax completed an MFA Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London 2014-16 and BA (Hons) Fine Art, Byam Shaw School of Art, London 2007-10. Recent Solo Exhibitions include; ‘Olivia Bax’, RIBOT arte contemporanea, Milan (forthcoming, 2024), ‘Handrailing’, New Arts Centre in collaboration with Sid Motion Gallery, Roche Court (2024) Cavalcade, BoLee and Workman, Bruton, UK (2024), Floss, Holtermann Fine Art, London (2023), ‘Monkey Cups’, Southbank Centre, London, ‘Home Range’, Holtermann Fine Art, London (2022) ‘Spill’, L21, Palma de Mallorca, Spain (2021) ‘Pah-d'-Bah’, HS Projects, London (2020/21), ‘Off Grid, Mark Tanner Sculpture Award Exhibition’ Touring (2020). Selected Group Exhibitions include ‘These Mad Hybrids: John Hoyland and Contemporary Sculpture’ Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (2024), ‘Phantom Sculpture’, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry (2023), ‘Confab Window, 2-person exhibition with Veronika Hilger’, HATCH, Paris (2023) ‘Eartheaters’ , Lustwarande - Platform for Contemporary Sculpture, Tilburg, Netherlands (2023, ‘Double Knowledge’, Alice Black Gallery, London (2023), ‘Khemeia’, Nico Projects, London (2023),’Search Party’, Tatjana Pieters, Ghent (2023),’Material Impressions: Artists & Paper;, Larsen Warner, Stockholm (2023), ‘The Ingram Collection: Revisiting Modern British Art’, The Lightbox, Woking, UK (2023), ‘The World We Live In: Art and the Urban Environment,’ Arts Council Collection Touring Exhibition: Leicester Museum & Art Gallery; Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.
Bax’s work is held in important public and private collections internationally including; Arts Council Collection, The Ingram Collection, Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, UCL Special Collections.
“Bax has a preference for conduit forms, such as pipes, funnels, tubes, chutes and hoppers,
that suggest ideas of passage and transferral while carrying directional energies with them”
