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In Olivia Bax’s sculptures, many of the works have a pocket or basin fused to a lopsided armature. They allude to a tool or instrument, conjuring images of transferring liquids through pipes or valves. Bax’s works are made with a variety of material from hand-formed and welded steel to cardboard, polystyrene and newspapers salvaged from the street. She mixes household paint deemed "wrong" by hardware stores into her material resulting in vivid colours in a rough, pulpy surface texture. Her inspiration ranges from distilling processes, religious fonts to optimised pockets of urban space. She was recently inspired by an elaborate foot cage used to heal her cousin's broken leg which realigned the bone from the outside. This led her to consider making sculpture the "wrong" way round; armatures become idle handrails and grilles, abstract drawings in space that echo public architecture yet resist logical form and function.
Olivia Bax (b. 1988, Singapore) lives and works in London. She studied BA Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London (2007-2010) and MFA Sculpture at Slade School of Fine Art, London (2014-2016). Recent solo exhibitions include: Home Range, Holtermann, London (2022); Spill, L21, Mallorca (2022); Off Grid, Mark Tanner Sculpture Award Exhibition, Standpoint Gallery London (2020) toured to Cross Lane Projects, Kendal (2020/21) and Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens (2021); pah-d'bah, HS Projects, London (2021) and Chute, Ribot Gallery, Milan (2019/20). Prizes include: The Mark Tanner Sculpture Award (2019/20); Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize (2016), Additional Award, Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix (2017) and Public Choice Winner, UK/Raine, Saatchi Gallery, London (2015). Bax’s work was acquired by the 2020-21 UK Arts Council Collection.
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Averaging
A couple of months ago I received a studio visit from an architect. I told him about my fascination with public spaces.
The cashier at my local supermarket is placed so that the customer has to walk around the whole shop in order to pay. Fast food restaurants are comfortable for the first 10 minutes and then the seats start to become uncomfortable and the lighting appears too brash. Railway stations are funnels to keep people moving. Handles on the bus, train or tube are often too high (for me), or too low (for many).The architect told me that handles, seats, shelters and public spaces are designed ‘for the average man’.
A world for the average man.
Gallery spaces are designed to encourage people to slow down and to look.
Sculpture is good at getting in the way.
There are often handles placed in my work. They have been purely aesthetic in the past but recently they are becoming an important tool to lift parts in place, and dismantle them again.
They are not averaged.Averaging by Olivia Bax (a short story from Yellowfields Volume 3:
Intuitive Geometries, Women making Contemporary sculpture)
Olivia Bax
Past viewing_room