page_title: Bronwyn Oliver
section_title: Works and exhibitions
hierarchical_section_title: Bronwyn Oliver / Works and exhibitions
caption_attribution_description: English: Bronwyn Oliver's sculpture Palm, Sydney Botanical Gardens
context_page_description: Bronwyn Joy Oliver was an Australian sculptor whose work primarily consisted of metalwork. Oliver was raised in rural New South Wales. She trained at Sydney's Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education and London's Chelsea School of Art. She had early success, winning a New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship in 1981 and the Moet & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship in 1984. Oliver settled in Sydney, where she practised and taught until her death in 2006.
  Oliver's sculptures are admired for their tactile nature, aesthetics, and technical skills demonstrated in their production. In her later career, most of her pieces were both public and private commissions. Her major works include Vine, a 16.5-metre-high sculpture in the Sydney Hilton, Magnolia and Palm, in the Sydney Botanical Gardens, and Big Feathers in Brisbane's Queen Street Mall. Recognition of her work included selection as a finalist in the inaugural Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award in 2000, inclusion in the National Gallery of Australia's 2002 National Sculpture Prize exhibition, and being shortlisted for the 2006 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award.
context_section_description: Biographer Hannah Fink estimated that Oliver produced 290 works over a career of 22 years. Of these, public art works are Oliver's best known sculptures. These include Eyrie, created for Adelaide's Hyatt Hotel in 1993, and Magnolia and Palm, commissioned in 1999 by the Sydney Botanical Gardens, as part of the Sydney Sculpture Walk. That same year, Big Feathers was commissioned for the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane. It comprises two large feather-shaped forms suspended above the pedestrian precinct, representing "Queen Street's history of parades as well as the mall's connection between earth and sky".
  In 2000, Oliver's piece Entwine was a finalist in the inaugural Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award, while in the following year, Oliver won the University of New South Wales inaugural sculpture commission competition, with her three-metre-high Globe. Other success followed, when Trace was selected for the National Gallery of Australia's 2002 National Sculpture Prize exhibition.
  In August 2002 she was one of five artists shortlisted by the Australian Government for a project to produce a public artwork celebrating the centenary of women's suffrage in Australia.
  By the 2000s most of Oliver's output constituted commissioned pieces, whether public or private. The most substantial of these is Vine, a 16.5 metre high sculpture installed as part of the $400 million refurbishment of the Sydney Hilton. Taking twelve months to create and requiring a budget of up to half million dollars, the work was completed in 2005. The sculpture was fabricated from 380 kilograms of aluminium, and assembled by a team of eight Croatian welders.
  By 2006, Oliver had held 18 solo exhibitions of her work, half of them at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, which represented her throughout her career as a sculptor. Only one of those solo exhibitions was held outside Australia: a 1992 exhibition at Auckland City Gallery. However, Oliver was represented in numerous international group shows, including five during the period 1983 to 1984, around the time she completed her master's degree in London. Four of the group shows at that time were in the United Kingdom; the fifth was at the Museum of Traditional Industries in Kyoto. Subsequent international group shows included 'Five Australian Artists' at Brest's Centre Culturale in 1988, the year she undertook an artist's residency in that city. Later group shows of which Oliver was part included 'Prospect '93' at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, 'Systems End: Contemporary Art in Australia', which exhibited in several east Asian galleries in 1996, and the Beijing International Biennale in 2003.
caption: Palm (1999), Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney
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