Olivia Tew

Olivia Tew BA (Hons) Textiles in Practice 2020

At the heart of Olivia’s practice is the relationship between our intimate, sensory worlds with our exterior, material realities. 

Working at a creative interface between materials, making and meaning, she is interested in how physical interactions with our material environments can help facilitate deeper notions of personal understanding. Allowing the hidden to be seen is a continuing theme explored throughout her work and this translates into how she handles materials, often taking discarded objects and manipulating them by hand, to transfigure them into a new life. Reaching her outcomes requires a process of becoming intimate with her subject matter, observing their sensory qualities, to then let her manifest it in material form.

In her latest project The Mourning Sun, she explores the visceral experience of change, loss and growth. Just prior to Covid-19 and the beginning of the social isolation period she suffered a family bereavement of which has impacted her family members in different ways. She investigates the possibility within this intimate time to create a space in which we can physically navigate these feelings on our own terms. As we each navigate our new realities within the collective stillness, she hopes this space can give hope to a new future of which we may currently not be sure of.

With each project Olivia’s practice continues to naturally expand, further establishing her artistic identity. Interested in material futures, she intends to explore this further with future study. She is currently seeking experience within a creative environment to broaden her professional and personal horizons.

Contact Olivia

oliviatew@gmail.com
www.oliviatew.com
instagram.com/oliviatew.studio
www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-tew-25881a1b0
The Mourning Sun project was founded in the beginnings of her final year where Olivia came to understand her interests and concerns as an artist - Movement, perception, embodied experiences and feelings of self.
Through capturing the raw expression of grief Olivia believes it allows the grieving person to be seen, something she has observed to not be allowed but is so deeply desired by the individual.
These images sew the seed for the Mourning Sun project. Questions sparked around how one can best help to endure this situation? How can she help one move from feeling lost to centred? From disconnected to connected?
In times of grief, Olivia’s mum would often wrap herself up in blankets, cocooning herself to find comfort. That stimulated the idea of creating a comforting space in which welcomed her to mourn and to receive the expressions that came with it. Through playing with the qualities of light and dark Olivia was exploring how the qualities could help her mum to connect to her external environment, of which her mum often didn’t feel.
Exploring the layers of the mourning process and the relationships in which help support you through it. Seeing these social bonds as the bolstering walls that you sometimes need to lean on.
The space that was created having the ability to see the sun overhead during the day and positioned in alignment with the sun setting at night allowed one to safely connect to the external world in the present moment.
Stills of inside the space.
Thinking about the movements of the sun being a way to connect to a sense of time, place and feeling.
Development Digital Paintings- Combining the images of the sun to reflect the internal emotions of loss and growth, creating a moving, dynamic “wall” of which could be used inside the space.
Footage showing the interactions with the internal walls of the space. As day resolved into night and light into dark the projections became stronger. This is symbolic of the relationship between dark and light, loss, life and hope and the process of gain
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