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Bronwyn Oliver: technique, concept, beauty and elegant detail

artists, spaces

27 January 2017

I often have lovely, creative people from overseas staying with me and it's always a great excuse to head out of town for the weekend.

Last Sunday was a perfect day to drive to Tarrawarra Museum of Art in Healesville to view the exhibition "The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver", curated by Julie Ewington.

Bronwyn Oliver (1959–2006) was one of the most significant Australian sculptors. This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of 50 key works, from the mid-1980s to the final solo exhibition in 2006.

It is often said that artists need to be in their own bubble to create such intense, delicate and beautiful works. Those who have worked with me often laugh at my continual use of the term "layers" – I search for technique, concept, beauty and elegant detail. Bronwyn Oliver's sculptures hold all of those layers; her work is visual poetry.

Oliver's distinctive organic metal sculptures, often inspired by nature, are intricate designs of transparent copper webbing. They are fluid, yet not innocent rendering the unforeseen forces of nature.

Her most famous works include "Magnolia" and "Palm", both of which sit in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney and Vine, which was commissioned by The Hilton Hotel in Sydney. It is among the longest sculptures in the country and the largest work that Oliver created at 16.5m long.

"When the ideas, the formal elements and the medium all work together, a sculpture will 'sing' with a kind of rightness. It takes on a life, a presence, which is removed from this world. It belongs to a mythical other life... This rightness isn't perfection. The sculpture might be a little sinister, or perhaps playful, or tense. Myths contain all kinds of variations in their pantheon." Bronwyn Oliver

Bronwyn sadly took her own life at the age of 47 just before her 11th solo exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Sydney. Oliver was an intensely private person with a strict work ethic broken only for exercise and meals. Oliver never wore gloves, protective clothing or glasses. Even though she had suffered depression for most of her life, after her death naturopaths felt Bronwyn was very ill from copper toxicity. Oliver's hair contained eight times the normal/healthy levels of copper, and toxic levels of tin, nickel, iron, cobalt and chromium.

"The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver", curated by Julie Ewington, is on until the 5 February 2017.