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Oliver Dorrell is a British artist who makes paintings on long walks. These walks last many days or weeks, with the artist walking alone, and sleeping outside along the way. Often the walks link cities across a mountain range or moorland. For example in October and November 2022, he walked across the Alps from Milan to Munich, loosely in the footsteps of the 16th Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel. On this trip, he set up temporary studios in mountain huts, and painted on silk with dry pigment and gum arabic. He finds silk the lightest and most durable material for these longer trips. More recently, he’s been  walking through mountainous regions of Wales, where he’s been painting outside and on paper. The paintings he makes on walks are necessarily spontaneous. Creased and worn by their travels and framed behind glass afterwards, they become almost relic-like, fragile artifacts to the physical, more primordial way of understanding our modern world through traveling on foot.

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 Trips

2024 - January, A Walk on Skis from Innsbruck up to a Mountain Hut

2022 - October and November, 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 Walk, Tusheti, Georgia

2017 - Winter Residency, Dagestan Republic, Russia 

2016 - Winter Walk, Albanian Alps

2014 - Walk, the rivers of South China 

2014 - Winter Walk, Tusheti, Georgia

2009 - Documnetary Film, 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 Walk, Pyrenees

2003 - Himilaya Walk, India and Nepal

2002 - UCL Expedition Grant, Rowing down the Mekong River from China to Vietnam

2000 - Rowing down the Ganges River, India

2000 - East Himilaya, Sikkim, India

Contact

Represented by Vivienne Roberts Projects

viviennerobertsprojects.com

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