Liminal Gallery Podcast host, Louise Fitzjohn, speaks with contemporary artist Olivia Strange, during her solo exhibition ‘It Softens The Blow, That Deep Melodic Bliss’ in Liminal Gallery's Main Space, in Margate from 6 July until 31 August 2024.

Pulling together the multifarious strands of Strange’s practice "It Softens the Blow, That Deep Melodic Bliss" explores notions of escape and survival through snapshot moments of euphoria and pleasure, as an act of resistance.

The work celebrates the freedom and intimacy found within singular moments in varying spaces from the domestic environment, the natural landscape to the rave scene, that offer a sense of safety to hold multiple truths simultaneously whilst providing a portal through which to explore identities away from the constraints of critical thought.

Through themes of dis/embodiment, movement, touch and tenderness, healing and empowerment, connection and ‘belonging’, Strange explores intimate moments in time that elicit a sense of escape and diversion from programmed ideas of self into altered states of consciousness and where emotions can be discharged in spaces and dimensions that provide transient moments of relief from the boundaries of day to day normative realities.

Olivia Strange's multi-disciplinary practice spanning sculpture, painting, installation, moving image and poetry, is characterised by a layered narrative and highly visceral aesthetic. The work is concerned with disarming patriarchal descriptors via exploration of her Italian roots and draws on themes of Greco-Roman mythology, historical narratives around witches, the female body & jouissance to portray an empowering image of queer female subjectivity.

Since graduating with Distinction from Chelsea College of Art- MA Fine Art (2017) having received the Vice Chancellor Scholarship, Strange has exhibited at Annka Kulty’s Gallery presenting an ambitious large scale immersive installation as part of the inaugural Cacotopia show, Southwark Park Galleries, ArtOn Istanbul, Unit 1 Gallery, Liminal Gallery (Solo Show), Every Woman Biennial, Basis Projektraum and had a solo presentation at London Art Fair with Liminal Gallery in 2024.

Strange was selected for the 2021 cohort of the SPACE Studios X London Creative Network Artist Development Programme and the Ellipsis Prints 2021 Commissioning Project and Shortlisted for the prestigious Ingram Collection Purchase Prize 2021. More recently Strange was selected for the Radical Residency 2022 at Unit 1 Gallery in London, longlisted for the Robert Walters UK New Artist Award 2022, co-curated the group exhibition ‘Bag, Pedestal, Rabbit, Potato’ which centred around Ursula. K. Le Guin’s seminal text The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction at Staffordshire Street Gallery, London and shortlisted for the GIRLPOWER Residency 2023.

Visit the Online Viewing Room here:

https://liminal-gallery.com/collections/olivia-strange-it-softens-the-blow

Contact us for all questions and enquiries: info@liminal-gallery.com

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With original music by Lorenzo Bonari.

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