Sixth Form

On Friday 9 November, Tim Ollivier's exhibition 'Journey' opens at the Crypt Gallery! Read below to find out more about what 'Journey' is about. 8th — 16th November Open daily 10 — 5pm Closed 10th November. Free admission. Can you tell me a little bit about this exhibition, in your own words? "In this exhibition, my work delves into studying qualities of light as it shifts throughout the day, and I have reflected on ideas gathered through exploring new locations and travel. Working with Print, Paint, Photography and Collage to show how ideas develop and evolve through the working process." This exhibition is a result of your sabbatical I believe, can you tell me about what this was? "The exhibition is the culmination of two activities I chose to do during the end of the school year and into the summer of 2024. Firstly, I attended a Printmaking course at Curwen Press just outside Cambridge. This is a specialist centre that allows artists to access excellent printmaking facilities and studio spaces to make their own work and learn new skills. I completed a course working with Solar Plates, using light to transfer images onto an etching plate and then produce a printed image. I followed this experience with travel and study at the location that Henri Matisse lived and worked in his later life. Vence in the hills above Nice in the south of France became a key influence in producing work for the exhibition, I was able to visit key places that Matisse had worked, lived, and shown his own work." Is this your first solo exhibition? "I have been lucky to have had a number of solo shows, mainly in London, I used to have a couple of galleries that represented and showed my work, The Paton Gallery in Hackney and Sarah Myerscough in Mayfair. It is always really nice to get work out of the studio and see it together in a clear space, stepping back and seeing it afresh." What is your creative history? "My earliest ambitions were to become an Architect, but during my Foundation course in Farnham, Surrey, I became increasingly fascinated with the possibilities and individual control I could have working as a Fine Artist. Painting became my dominant medium, through my first degree at Norwich Art school, but printmaking and technically combining methods and material qualities has continually fascinated me. After completed an MA Fine Art Painting course at the Royal College, I gained a gallery to represent my work and begun showing and working from a London Studio I helped set up in Hoxton, London. I later supplemented my income from painting sales with offering technical advice to artists, becoming involved in the manufacture of artist oil paints, and picture framing and work involving the transportation of artworks around the world for the National Gallery, London." How does your creative career fit into your work at the school? "I continue to produce new works from my studio that I have in the garden of my home in North Norfolk. I love to encourage and develop new ways of producing art and working with the pupils in the art department allows me to demonstrate how digital methods can enhance and question traditional creative techniques. There are always endless new skills, approaches and combinations that can be developed to enhance future creative works." What are you hoping that people take away from the exhibition? "My intentions for the show are that I communicate how an initial stimulus from visiting or doing something different can spark a creative response. I wished to capture the process, over the last 6 months, how ideas form, development through play and experimentation, and how the refinement of a making vocabulary can begin. I hope my travel and experience is captured as the audience moves around the works in the exhibition and the sense of travel is conveyed." What's next for you? "Hopefully, I will continue to develop some of the experimentation and work from the inspiration gained, bringing this together to produce some larger oil paintings that will be exhibited in the staff show due to take place next summer!"