OLIVIA STERLING
"The paintings have elements of humour/slapstick and I have maintained this because othering is an absurd act and therefore I wish to reflect that in how the paintings look ... othering to me is every day, small acts (and of course there are larger violent ones hanging overhead). To try and recreate the everyday feel, I make paintings that are often just domestic scenes or mimic the everydayness of othering."
–Olivia Sterling, She Curates magazine, 2021
Olivia Sterling was born in 1996 in Peterborough, England. She received her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2020.
With an aesthetic that nods to the Victorian-era satire magazine Punch and the prints of William Hogarth, Sterling’s work is a contemporary take on the genre scene. Characterised by vibrant colours, bold, curvaceous brushstrokes and a double-portion of humour, these seemingly cheerful compositions serve an allegorical purpose, with the typical, everyday scenes depicted in Sterling’s work holding up a mirror to our lives and our prejudices.
Sterling uses what may initially appear as unremarkable scenes of contemporary life to subtly critique racialised ways of seeing. Whether portraying people preparing food, sunburnt holidaymakers by the pool or squirty cream being fired across a table at a party, the scenes she depicts act as symbols for the everyday, proving a platform for us to reflect on how we are confronted by racialised discourse on a day-to-day basis and how even seemingly mundane events are encoded with structures of othering and difference.
The tight cropping that typically features in Sterling’s work strips away elements that would give character to the figures and focuses our attention on certain body parts, leaving us only skin tones with which to draw any conclusion about who might be depicted in the work. This focusing is further reinforced by the lettering Sterling often includes in her work, annotating the various colours of the scene, from skin tones to the colours of the inanimate objects. By drawing the viewer’s attention to the colours in her pictures, Sterling forces us to consider how, as a society, we tend to view race in simplified, narrow terms and the biases that are born out of this way of seeing.
EDUCATION
2015–2018 BA Fine Art, University of Derby
2018–2020 MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021
Solo Show, Guts Gallery, UK (forthcoming)
White Bread, Cob Gallery, London
Episodes, CCA Goldsmiths, London (forthcoming)
Selfhood, Berntson Bhattacharjee Gallery, London (forthcoming)
Safe as Milk, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, UK
Clutching at Straws, Volt, Eastbourne, UK
It Clings like a Leech, Guts Gallery, London
A Cure for Nose Bleeds, Marriots Way, Reepham Norfolk, UK
2018
Who is civilised?, Gallery No.1, Repton, UK
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2020
Curated for Christmas, All Mouth x Bowes-Parris Gallery, London
RCA Black History Online, David Lisbon, online
Love your symptom, but not too much, Blank Projects, Cape Town
A Rudimentary Education, Art Lacuna, London
London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London
Right Back at You, The Function Suite, London
Begin Again, Guts Gallery, online
BLACK & WHITE, The Orange Garden, online
50/50, FOLD Gallery, London
London’s New Contemporaries, A Space for Art, Hari Hotel, London
Materiality and Connection, curated by Joe Hill, RCA, online
Optimistic, Singular and New, curated by Jony Ive, RCA, online
Urgency, Wit and Rigour, curated by John Bloomfield, RCA, online
I Graduated From My Bedroom, curated by Victor Wang, RCA, online
Slivers and Remnants, curated by Esther Leslie, RCA, online
RCA2020, RCA, online
Tomorrow: London, White Cube, online
Without a Painter, Fitzrovia Gallery, London
Snapshot, RCA Hockney Gallery, London
2019
Meet Me in the Kitchen, UCA Farnham, Surrey, UK
Got it for Cheap, House of Vans, London
Painting from the Other Side, Dyson Gallery, London
2018
WIP, Sackler, RCA Battersea, London
Britannia Mill, Derby, UK
2017
Smoke and Mirrors, Riverlights, Derby, UK
2016
Ilam, Staffordshire, UK
2014
Earth without Art, Spalding, UK
RESIDENCIES
2020
HQI Summer residency, London
2016
Extended Contexts, National Trust IIam, UK
ARTIST TALKS
2020
HoP Around with Alexandria Smith, RCA, London
Without a Painter in Conversation with Bolane Tajudeen, London
2019
Artist Talk, UCA Farnham, UK
AWARDS
2018
Pro Vice-Chancellor / Dean's Award 2018 Degree Show Exhibition