Olivia Kemp's drawings are expansive and relentless, fruit of an enthusiasm that borders on obsession. They take the idea of a romanticised or idealised place and run with it beyond any natural geography or sense of proportion. While her smaller drawings are intimate and precise, her large works seem endless and complex in the extreme, packed with a plethora of tiny details which are each given minute focus but built up into scenes without any focal point or respite. Most are of places Olivia has known but which she then turns into something ‘other’ through the processes of remembering and drawing. It is memory in action, an attachment to a physical place that is fired by imagination: specific and particular, whilst at the same time sprawling and continuous. Olivia Kemp's work is held in The Royal Collection (including the personal collection of Prince Charles), the Victoria & Albert Museum, and The Rothschild Collection, for whom she was commisioned to create a piece based on the RIBA award-winning Flint House (2015).
BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting at Winchester School of Art, 2011
MA Drawing at Wimbledon College of Art (UAL), 2013
"The Drawing Year" postgraduate programme, The Royal Drawing School 2013/14.
Exhibitions
2018
Borderlines, James Freeman Gallery, London
2017
'Where The Land Lies' (solo), Browse & Darby, London
Art for Guernsey (solo), St Peter Port, Guernsey
The Source', curated by Laura Lopes, Ford Farm, Aldbourne, Wiltshire
2016
Winners Exhibition, NOA, Pallant House Gallery & Mercer's Hall, London
The Griffin Art Prize, Shortlist Exhibition, Griffin Gallery, London
Vanishing Point, James Freeman Gallery. Lonodon
"DRAWN" The Street Gallery,UCLH
Drawings from The Royal Drawing School at Christies New York
2015
London Art Fair 2015
Drawing Year Final Exhibition, Royal Drawing School
Lynn Painter- Stainers Prize Exhibition, The Mall Galleries
The Royal West of England Academy
Jealous Gallery East
The Fleming Collection
Lacey Contemporary
2014
Art 14
The Jealous Prize, The Saatchi Gallery
Jealous Gallery
PICTURE Gallery, Hammersmith.
Verso, The Tea Building
2013
Wimbledon College of Art MA show
Hyde Park Corner tube station
The Other Art Fair
Hoxton Arches
The Affordable Art Fair, Graduate Showcase.
2012
The National Gallery
Taplin Gallery
The Centre for Drawing (Wimbledon)
2011
Bargehouse (Oxo Tower Wharf)
Southampton University Library
Awards & Residencies
The Prado, Madrid
Wimbledon Trust Bursary
The Wimbledon Jealous Prize 2013
The Chairmans Prize (Royal Drawing School)
The Richard Ford Award
Lacey Contemporary, Summer Arts Prize (runner up)
Dumfries House residency
Pignano, Italy residency
Collections
Rothschild Family; V&A Museum; The Royal Collection; Private collection of Prince Charles; University of the Arts London; The Darbyshire Collection; Dumfries House; Moritz-Heyman Collection