Bronwyn Oliver is a very interesting person to write about here. Her work, mostly sculptures in metal (copper) are beautiful and in many cases live outdoors in her native Australia. Bronwyn tragically took her own life about six years ago but has left an indelible mark on the sculptural world regardless.
I love how the copper ages and changes over time – the patina blends in with the surroundings.
In reading her Wikipedia page it sounds like she preferred to work in copper but that some pieces were aluminum. I honestly can’t tell which is which but I assume the above is copper given the coloring. I love how it looks borderline biological / intestinal.
Some of her work looks so heavy and so dark yet it’s done very meticulously so as to appear woven (it is in some cases). I can’t imagine trying not mess this up!
Her indoor installations are amazing – it looks like a cyclone and gives you some sense of scale. I think her pieces are larger than one thinks at first. A cool note in her bio is that she didn’t get too explanatory about the meanings of her works after they were created. She was much more into sharing the process of the creation of her pieces, which I respect a lot. Sometimes there’s not some deep, sub-text — it’s just about the build.
I love copper well patina’ed. We have a table in our house in NH made out of old farm seed plates and my mother painted them with copper paint that you can oxidize I think by spraying it. The table lives outside (on a screened-in porch) and has a similar color to the above – so beautiful.
I don’t even know. It looks like an alien from a scary movie – except the whiteness makes it somehow less threatening. Imagine if this were that dark greeny-black tone. I would be scared to go get a glass of water at night with that on the floor!
Amazing. While Bronwyn seems to have been surrounded by a close, small circle of friends she was, so it reads, quite troubled and while I love her work and she was fairly prolific given the scale and intricacy of her work I do hope she’s at peace.
Tags: 3D, Australia, copper, metal, sculpture