Bronwyn Oliver
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Bronwyn Joy Oliver (née Gooda, 22 February 1959 – 10 July 2006) was an Australian sculptor whose work primarily consisted of metalwork. Oliver was raised in rural
New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...
. She trained at Sydney's Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education and London's
Chelsea School of Art Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London based in London, United Kingdom, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation. It offers further and higher educat ...
. She had early success, winning a New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship in 1981 and the Moet & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship in 1984. Oliver settled in Sydney, where she practised and taught until her death in 2006. Oliver's sculptures are admired for their tactile nature, aesthetics, and technical skills demonstrated in their production. In her later career, most of her pieces were both public and private commissions. Her major works include ''Vine'', a 16.5-metre-high sculpture in the Sydney Hilton, ''Magnolia'' and ''Palm'', in the
Sydney Botanical Gardens The Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney is a heritage-listed major botanical garden, event venue and public recreation area located at Farm Cove on the eastern fringe of the Sydney central business district, in the City of Sydney local government ar ...
, and ''Big Feathers'' in Brisbane's
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. Recognition of her work included selection as a finalist in the inaugural Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award in 2000, inclusion in the
National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...
's 2002 National Sculpture Prize exhibition, and being shortlisted for the 2006
Clemenger Contemporary Art Award The Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, also referred to as the Clemenger Award, was a major, triennial, invitational art prize organised under the auspices of the National Gallery of Victoria and funded by the philanthropists Joan and Peter Cleme ...
. Her works are held in major Australian collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the
National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum. The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...
and the
Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most importa ...
.


Early life

Oliver was born Bronwyn Gooda on 22 February 1959, in Gum Flat, west of
Inverell Inverell is a large town in northern New South Wales, Australia, situated on the Macintyre River, close to the Queensland border. It is also the centre of Inverell Shire. Inverell is located on the Gwydir Highway on the western slopes of the No ...
, in New South Wales. Her parents were Milton, a farmer turned greenkeeper, and Wendy, who worked in a pharmacy. Her creativity was nurtured from a young age. Aged just eight, Oliver attended weekend art classes in Inverell run by Ian Howard, who went on to become dean of the college in Sydney where she would later study. As she was
dux ''Dux'' (; plural: ''ducēs'') is Latin for "leader" (from the noun ''dux, ducis'', "leader, general") and later for duke and its variant forms (doge, duce, etc.). During the Roman Republic and for the first centuries of the Roman Empire, '' ...
of her school, her parents expected her to go on to university. However, Oliver wished to pursue a creative career. When she told her parents of her plans, her mother replied, "Darling, your father and I are very pleased you're going to art school, but if you'd been a son, I think we'd be a little disappointed." A rift subsequently developed between her and her family that resulted in her having no contact with them for 25 years. After leaving school, Oliver studied and worked in Sydney. She had intended to enrol in painting classes, but a computer error placed her in the sculpture course: she later said "I knew straight away I was in the right place". She graduated from the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education in 1980. Winning a New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship in 1983, she then completed a master's degree at
Chelsea School of Art Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London based in London, United Kingdom, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation. It offers further and higher educat ...
in 1984. Her work was influenced by Richard Deacon,
Antony Gormley Sir Antony Mark David Gormley (born 30 August 1950) is a British sculptor. His works include the ''Angel of the North'', a public sculpture in Gateshead in the north of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998; ''Another Pla ...
and Martin Puryear under whom she studied while in England. Upon returning from the United Kingdom, she immediately met with further success, when in 1984 she won a Moet & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship. In 1988 she was granted a period as artist-in-residence in the city of
Brest Brest may refer to: Places *Brest, Belarus **Brest Region **Brest Airport **Brest Fortress * Brest, Kyustendil Province, Bulgaria * Břest, Czech Republic *Brest, France ** Arrondissement of Brest **Brest Bretagne Airport ** Château de Brest *Br ...
on the coast of
Brittany Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, Historical region, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known ...
, where she studied Celtic metalworking techniques.


Personal life

In her early twenties, Bronwyn Gooda married Leslie Oliver, taking his surname and later retaining it "despite a distressing divorce". The artist lived in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Haberfield, where she also had her studio. For 19 years up until her death, she taught art to primary school-age children at Sydney's Cranbrook School in Bellevue Hill. She was a friend of Roslyn Oxley, at whose eponymous gallery Oliver exhibited her works. Her long-term partner was wine writer Huon Hooke.


Works and exhibitions

Biographer Hannah Fink estimated that Oliver produced 290 works over a career of 22 years. Of these, public art works are Oliver's best known sculptures. These include ''Eyrie'', created for Adelaide's Hyatt Hotel in 1993, and ''Magnolia'' and ''Palm'', commissioned in 1999 by the
Sydney Botanical Gardens The Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney is a heritage-listed major botanical garden, event venue and public recreation area located at Farm Cove on the eastern fringe of the Sydney central business district, in the City of Sydney local government ar ...
, as part of the Sydney Sculpture Walk. That same year, ''Big Feathers'' was commissioned for the
Queen Street Mall The Queen Street Mall is a pedestrian mall located on Queen Street in the centre of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The mall extends approximately from George Street to Edward Street, and has more than 700 retailers over of retail spa ...
in Brisbane. It comprises two large feather-shaped forms suspended above the pedestrian precinct, representing "Queen Street's history of parades as well as the mall's connection between earth and sky". In 2000, Oliver's piece ''Entwine'' was a finalist in the inaugural Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award, while in the following year, Oliver won the
University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensive ...
inaugural sculpture commission competition, with her three-metre-high ''Globe''. Other success followed, when ''Trace'' was selected for the
National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...
's 2002 National Sculpture Prize exhibition. In August 2002 she was one of five artists shortlisted by the Australian Government for a project to produce a public artwork celebrating the centenary of
women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...
in Australia. By the 2000s most of Oliver's output constituted commissioned pieces, whether public or private. The most substantial of these is ''Vine'', a 16.5 metre high sculpture installed as part of the $400 million refurbishment of the Sydney Hilton. Taking twelve months to create and requiring a budget of up to half million dollars, the work was completed in 2005. The sculpture was fabricated from 380 kilograms of aluminium, and assembled by a team of eight Croatian welders. By 2006, Oliver had held 18 solo exhibitions of her work, half of them at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, which represented her throughout her career as a sculptor. Only one of those solo exhibitions was held outside Australia: a 1992 exhibition at Auckland City Gallery. However, Oliver was represented in numerous international group shows, including five during the period 1983 to 1984, around the time she completed her master's degree in London. Four of the group shows at that time were in the United Kingdom; the fifth was at the Museum of Traditional Industries in
Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...
. Subsequent international group shows included 'Five Australian Artists' at
Brest Brest may refer to: Places *Brest, Belarus **Brest Region **Brest Airport **Brest Fortress * Brest, Kyustendil Province, Bulgaria * Břest, Czech Republic *Brest, France ** Arrondissement of Brest **Brest Bretagne Airport ** Château de Brest *Br ...
's Centre Culturale in 1988, the year she undertook an artist's residency in that city. Later group shows of which Oliver was part included 'Prospect '93' at the
Frankfurter Kunstverein The Frankfurt Art Association (german: link=no, Frankfurter Kunstverein) is an art museum founded in 1829 by a group of influential citizens of the city of Frankfurt, Germany. The aim of the institution is to support the arts in the city, which w ...
, 'Systems End: Contemporary Art in Australia', which exhibited in several east Asian galleries in 1996, and the
Beijing International Biennale } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
in 2003.


Technique

A sculptor for her entire artistic career, Oliver used paper, cane or fibreglass for her early works. However, she found "fibreglass hazardous and paper too impermanent", and for most of her career she worked in metal. The metals used for her creations varied: the monumental ''Vine'' was fabricated in aluminium, as was the Brisbane sculpture ''Big Feathers''; however most, such as ''Palm'' and the 2002 sculpture ''Lock'', were crafted in copper. All 25 works included in the 1995 publication, ''Bronwyn Oliver: mnemonic chords'', were made in copper, though a handful also utilised other materials such as bronze, lead or, in one case, fibreglass. Oliver was always preoccupied with "what materials will do". Fink observed that " om the beginning, Oliver has been interested in things that are made from the inside out, and her works often give cryptic evidence of their manufacture". That evidence of manufacture was not confined to the works themselves: friends and art critics observed the injuries and marks she carried as a result of working with such unforgiving material. Ideas were often first sketched by Oliver, before she moved to construction in three dimensions. When preparing commissions, she would draw on the ideas of clients or the nature of the site. For large works she created
maquette A ''maquette'' (French word for scale model, sometimes referred to by the Italian names ''plastico'' or ''modello'') is a scale model or rough draft of an unfinished sculpture. An equivalent term is ''bozzetto'', from the Italian word for "sketc ...
s (or models), sometimes in plasticine, on other occasions using copper wire or, in the case of her 2002 sculpture ''Globe'', wood and metal. Oliver would produce the more delicate works herself. Many were created by crafting and joining wire to create abstract forms. These were built around moulds, twisting the metal into place with pliers, before severing it with wirecutters. Joins were soldered or brazed (though in some pieces, the wire was woven). In ''Web'' (2002), copper pieces were sewn together using wire. Her partner Huon Hooke described her at work in the studio:
She is sitting cross-legged on the floor, on a piece of foam rubber. Her work is on a low bench constructed of timber covered with fireproof bricks...The tiny jeweller's blowtorch is in her right hand, the big bottles of oxygen and acetylene standing behind her. In her left is the brazing rod and she's making one of the thousands of joints that make up a new sculpture, the fire licking at the fireproof cement covering the polystyrene mould as well as curling around the tiny piece of cooper wire which is being joined.
Major pieces were created at Crawfords Casting foundry in
Enfield Enfield may refer to: Places Australia * Enfield, New South Wales * Enfield, South Australia ** Electoral district of Enfield, a state electoral district in South Australia, corresponding to the suburb ** Enfield High School (South Australia) ...
in Sydney's inner western suburbs. Although the foundry would fabricate the elements of the sculptures, Oliver would still undertake the initial stages, training foundry staff and supervising their activity. Some of the pieces assembled to create the sculptures were made using copper rod, while others were formed using the
lost-wax casting Lost-wax casting (also called "investment casting", "precision casting", or ''cire perdue'' which has been adopted into English from the French, ) is the process by which a duplicate metal sculpture (often silver, gold, brass, or bronze) is ...
technique. Individual pieces would take up to two months to complete.


Themes and critical reception

Oliver was not one to intellectualise her creativity: she preferred to talk about the process of creating her artworks rather than their meanings. Asked about how she approached her art, she stated: While Oliver was reluctant to discuss meaning in her works, critics have identified recurring themes. Hannah Fink, like art critic John McDonald, noted that there is a pattern to the shapes and structures in Oliver's work. Fink described this as "a consistent vocabulary of elemental forms – the spiral, meander, loop and sphere – in a repertoire of signature archetypes". McDonald said that Nature is "omnipresent" and referred to them as organisms or their remains. Despite their organic appearance, Oliver's own view was that her work was not grounded in nature's structures. Nevertheless, critics have identified the lifelike qualities of early pieces that resembled shells, claws or tails, or noted the apparent similarities to biological forms. McDonald commented that "For Oliver to deny nature is akin to
Balthus Balthasar Klossowski de Rola (February 29, 1908 – February 18, 2001), known as Balthus, was a Polish-French modern artist. He is known for his erotically charged images of pubescent girls, but also for the refined, dreamlike quality of his image ...
saying there is nothing erotic about his paintings or
Rothko Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...
claiming his works aren't abstract." Both major reviews of Oliver's work published in her lifetime (Fenner's 1995 essay and Fink's 2002 journal article) draw attention to dualism and contradiction in the sculptures: Fenner describes them as "delicate and ephemeral, etstructurally robust and durable"; Fink sees them as "ethereal but solid, fluid yet rigid, open but closed". Oliver's sculptures are admired for their tactile nature, their aesthetics, and the technical skills demonstrated in their production. Particular works have been singled out for praise. A writer reviewing ''Vine'' in the Sydney Hilton admired how it "curls like a fairy tale beanstalk up towards the ceiling as though empowered by the sunlight streaming in from a large open space adjacent". Journalist Catherine Keenan's 2005 description of how the towering sculpture demonstrated both aesthetic and production values are typical of comments about Oliver's work: ''
The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
s art writer, John McDonald, said of her work "It often seems to me she's only got one tune, but it's a pretty good tune". He later elaborated: Despite this consistency in her output and the coherent themes of her oeuvre, variety was also present. Critic Bruce James considered her 2002 exhibition, and in particular one small work titled ''Crackled'', to demonstrate a broader artistic range: "''Crackled'' is ... formally surprising, evidence that Oliver is not content to rely on a winning recipe of convolution for her concepts. Whole new areas of physical and artistic exploration lay open before her". Hannah Fink, reflecting on Oliver's last sculptures, wrote: In 2000, Oliver was included by '' Australian Art Collector'' in its list of Australia's 50 "most collectable artists". In 2005, her work was identified by auction dealers as amongst those of greatest interest in the secondary art market.


Death and legacy

Oliver was sometimes characterised as reclusive in both the artistic and social worlds. Her teacher and long-time associate Professor Ian Howard described her as having "an underlying and at times painful distrust of the relationships that are part of our everyday lives". Close friend and gallerist, Roslyn Oxley, observed that she was "very private. She stopped people entering her world a lot of the time." Oliver's sister, Helen, had described her as a "powerful and fragile person" while biographer Fink observed " deeply asocial person, hononetheless maintained longstanding friendships with a small coterie of people whom she trusted". The final period of Oliver's personal life was the subject of contradictory accounts. Oxley said that Oliver in 2006 experienced the end of a 20-year-long relationship, and obituarist Joyce Morgan, who spoke to Huon Hooke after Oliver's death, described Hooke as Oliver's "former" partner. though others writing shortly after her death did not indicate that the relationship with Hooke had ended, including an obituary by Howard, one written by art critic John McDonald, and tributes by her two biographers, Felicity Fenner and Hannah Fink. Some years later, author Katrina Strickland interviewed people close to Oliver, and reported they had noticed a gradual deterioration in her personality over a period of years; she became "reclusive, obsessive, anxious" as well as "difficult and impatient, and completely obsessed with her diet." Under the circumstances, Hooke had felt he "just wanted to be somewhere else" and left the relationship in late May 2006. At that point, Strickland recounted, "Oliver fell to pieces". Her friend Roslyn Oxley subsequently concluded that, at some point, Oliver made plans to take her own life. Journalist Sunanda Creagh interviewed Oxley, as the gallerist prepared the last exhibition of her friend's work: Oliver committed suicide on 10 July 2006. McDonald recounts that, some weeks after her death, Hooke indicated in an interview that Oliver was "a very troubled person", but none of the sources offered anything definitive about why she took her own life; McDonald himself concluded "we will never know". In 2013, it was reported that analysis of a sample of Oliver's hair contained a very high level of copper, nearly 8 times normal. The debilitating effects of high copper levels, which are associated with some mental illnesses, may have been exacerbated by an
imbalance A balance disorder is a disturbance that causes an individual to feel unsteady, for example when standing or walking. It may be accompanied by feelings of giddiness, or wooziness, or having a sensation of movement, spinning, or floating. Balance ...
created by low zinc levels in her diet, which was devoid of red meat. Just before her death, Oliver had been shortlisted for the 2006
Clemenger Contemporary Art Award The Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, also referred to as the Clemenger Award, was a major, triennial, invitational art prize organised under the auspices of the National Gallery of Victoria and funded by the philanthropists Joan and Peter Cleme ...
. In the year following, Oliver was amongst 60 artists profiled in Sonia Payes' book ''Untitled: Portraits of Australian Artists'', while in 2008 her final works were included in the Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art. The secondary art market, meanwhile, was returning six-figure sums for her works at auction; in 2007 a record for Oliver's work was set when ''Skein'' (2004) went under the hammer for $192,000. By 2010,
Sydney Biennale The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is a large and well-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and ...
chairman Luca Belgiorno-Nettis was reported to have paid $300,000 for one of Oliver's sculptures, titled ''Tracery''. In 2011, Sydney's College of Fine Arts announced that its new sculpture studio would be named after Oliver. In late 2017 Hannah Fink's book ''Bronwyn Oliver: Strange Things'' was launched by Kip Williams at Carthona. Works by Oliver are held in most major Australian art collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria,
Queensland Art Gallery The Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) is an art museum located in South Bank, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The gallery is part of QAGOMA. It complements the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) building, situated only away. The Queensland Art Galler ...
, the
Art Gallery of South Australia The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), established as the National Gallery of South Australia in 1881, is located in Adelaide. It is the most significant visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of ...
, the
Auckland Art Gallery Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki is the principal public gallery in Auckland, New Zealand. It has the most extensive collection of national and international art in New Zealand and frequently hosts travelling international exhibitions. Set be ...
, the
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) is a museum located in Hobart, Tasmania. The museum was established in 1846, by the Royal Society of Tasmania, the oldest Royal Society outside England. The TMAG receives 400,000 visitors annually. ...
, Wollongong City Gallery, Orange Regional Gallery, and the Australian government's collection
Artbank Artbank is an art rental program established in 1980 by the Australian Government. It supports contemporary Australian artists and encourages a wider appreciation of their work by buying artworks which it then rents to public and private sector c ...
. The first "comprehensive survey of 50 key works, from the mid-1980s to the final solo exhibition in 2006" was held in Tarrawarra Museum of Art in
Healesville, Victoria Healesville is a town in Victoria, Australia, 52 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district, located within the Shire of Yarra Ranges local government area. Healesville recorded a population of 7,589 in the 2021 census. H ...
from 19 November 2016 to 5 February 2017.


See also

*
List of public art in the City of Sydney Public art in the City of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia includes a wide range of works across a range of genres and for a range of purposes or combination of purposes. Some are purely artistic, some are commemorative, some are both. Som ...


Endnotes


References


Further reading

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External links


Oliver's work and exhibition history
at Roslyn Oxley9 gallery
Oliver's work
at Tarrawarra Museum of Art
Oliver's works
sold
Oliver
in her studio
Oliver's
work ''Unicorn''
Oliver's
work ''Egg Carrying Object'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Oliver, Bronwyn 1959 births 2006 suicides Alumni of the University of the Arts London Australian expatriates in the United Kingdom 21st-century Australian sculptors Sculptors who committed suicide Suicides in New South Wales University of New South Wales alumni 20th-century Australian sculptors 20th-century Australian women artists 21st-century Australian women artists 2006 deaths