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