Cafe Wall: current exhibition

6 August - 15 September

Olivia is a South African artist based in Cambridge, working across painting, drawing, and printmaking. Her practice is rooted in abstracting and reconstructing traditional landscape painting through the use of vivid colours, texture, and dynamic shapes. By questioning our conventional understanding of landscapes, she seeks to expand the ways in which we perceive and experience them through contemporary painting and printmaking methods. She is particularly interested in how mark-making can act as a bridge between memory, place, and materiality.

She engages expanded painting approaches that challenge traditional depictions of space, depth, and form, and is drawn to the process-driven possibilities of printmaking, where layering, repetition, and materiality push the boundaries of how images are constructed and perceived. Inspired by Cape Town’s mountains and seascapes, in parallel to the landscapes of Cambridgeshire, she merges memories of these places with abstracted forms to create new visual experiences. Through her practice, she endeavours to (re)interpret experiences of landscapes through expanded mark making.

Olivia holds an Honours degree in Fine Art from Stellenbosch University and a PGCE in Art Education. Olivia recently completed her MA in Fine Art/Printmaking at Anglia Ruskin University and currently teaches Art and Art History. In addition to her studio practice, she is an art educator and visual art education content creator, developing resources that engage learners in creative exploration and critical thinking. She has recently worked with Cambridge Visual Culture, and is passionate about making art accessible and fostering a deeper understanding of visual culture through her teaching and content creation.