Artist based in London
My paintings are made on long walks. On these walks, I carry sized silk, a collapsible stretcher frame, gum arabic and dry pigment so I can set up temporary studios in mountain huts, shelters, barns or on picnic benches. Often, the walks link two cities across a wilderness and are prompted by art history or literature. For example, in October and November 2022, I walked across the Alps from Milan to Munich. It was a walk inspired by the Alpine journey Bruegel made in 1554.
Having set up a temporary studio, my intention might be to paint something I’d seen or felt along the way; like the lonely feeling of being watched by a chamois; or the futuristic elegance of a flyover plugging into a mountain side tunnel; or an absent glacier; or the sensation of rain from under an umbrella. The intention, however, has to compete with the restrictions caused by weather — this could be the cold, or a blizzard forecast — and the exertion of walking through the landscapes, and the action of folding, carrying and re-stretching the silk support, as well as the awkwardness of making watercolours from dry pigment and silk. These antagonistic things resolve into spontaneous paintings, creased and worn by their travels, and which, framed behind glass after my walk, become fragile artifacts to the physical, more primordial way of understanding our modern world through traveling on foot.
All work for sale, please contact the artist dorrello@gmail.com
Education
2017/18 MA Painting. (Distinction). Wimbledon College of Arts, University of the Arts London.
2001-2004 Bsc Anthropology. University College London.
Exhibitions
April-May 2024 - Solo Exhibition 'Walking After Bruegel: Paintings From Mountain Huts' The Muse Gallery, London.
Oct-Nov 2023 - 'Don't Look Back' Vivienne Roberts Projects, The Bindery, London
Nov-Dec 2021 'We Are Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On, Aleph Contemporary. Cello Factory, London
Nov 2020 - 'Art On A Postcard' London
Oct-Dec 2020- 'Reflections' Aleph Contemporary. London
Nov 2019 - The Ethnic Cultural Centre, Makhachkala, Dagestan, Russia
July 2019 -'Loop' Blase' London
Mar 2019 -'Guerilla Warefare' Blase, London
Apr 2019 - Vishnu Manchu Art Residency Exhibition, Turupathi, South India
Nov 2018 -'Wrong Food' Blasé, London
Sept 2018 - Wimbledon College of Art MA Show, London
May 2018 -'62 Hands'. Lewisham Art House, London
Residencies and Painting Expeditions
2022 - A Walk from Milan to Munich
2021 - A Walk from Dorset to Cornwall
2020 - A walk around Dorset
2019 - Vishnu Manchu Art Foundation Residency, Tirupati, South India.
2018 - Winter Expedition, Tusheti, Georgia
2017 - Residency, Dagestan Republic, Russia
2016 - Winter Expedition, Albanian Alps
2014 - Walking Expedition, the rivers of South China
2014 - Winter Expedition, Tusheti, Georgia
2009 - Filming Expedition, Koidu, Sierra Leone, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/video/2013/sep/11/sierra-leone-child-soldier-video
2005 - Sailing from Antigua to New York
2004 - Sailing the Coast of Scotland from Grimsby to Belfast
2003 - Winter Expedition, Pyrenees
2003 - Himilaya Expedition, Nepal
2002 - UCL Expedition Grant, Mekong River from China to Vietnam
2000 - Ganges River, India
2000 - East Himilaya, Sikkim, India
Contact
©2024 Oliver Dorrell. All rights reserved. No part of this site may be produced without permission.