Blue Shop Gallery presents
'Saved For Later'
Olly Fathers | Gallery 1
16th May - 2nd June 2024
PV Drinks Wednesday 15th May 6-9pm
72 Brixton Road, Oval SW9 6BH
Gallery opening hours: Wed - Sun | 11am - 6pm

Olly Fathers (b. 1987) is an artist based in Brixton, London. His work uses the medium of wood and marquetry as a technique to create pieces that react to space and context. Born in the West Midlands, Fathers studied Fine Art (Painting) at Wimbledon College of Art, graduating with a BA in 2010.

Residing in London since, Fathers work has always been influenced by the city landscape and the architecture within it. His work communicates via the bold use of composition, colour and balance, which lives at the heart of each piece. The relationship of forms and the shapes around them is what interests Fathers, his pieces often give a sense of static ness, a still, often peaceful breathing space to consider within a fast paced city surround.

With a passion for detail, Fathers takes great satisfaction in the making process and this often becomes influential in the outcome of his work. These pieces use incredibly intricately cut wood veneers, brought together using self taught marquetry techniques. Working in this precisely cut medium, Fathers works are characterised by hard edged shapes and lines. Over the years, Fathers has utilised this technique to craft large scale, site specific works that almost have no limitation of scale.

Having naturally integrated working together gradually over the past few years Olly’s wife Emma Fathers now joins Fathers as part of the studio and this first Blue Shop Gallery show together ‘Saved for Later’.

This body of work came about almost in celebration of the forgotten offcuts and forms that were never initially intended. Through the process of Olly and Emma’s marquetry based works, as each precisely measured form is cut from the wood there will be an occasional beauty found in the accidental shapes left behind within the negative space. These shapes were almost seen as ‘organic’ and very much pathed the way for this looser body of work.

Perhaps out of nostalgia for collecting ‘treasures’ in childhood, similar to boxes filled with ‘crystals of the world’ Fathers began to collect the ‘jewels’ of these accidental beautiful forms.

The very nature of their chosen media of marquetry lends itself to works that are very meticulously planned and cut, this body of work began with a freer intention in mind. The ‘organic forms’ which were saved for later took on more natural curves and peaks that informed a new area of inspiration, less architectural and more from the landscapes and natural beauty of forms found in nature.

Enjoying the freedom of playing with these freer shapes, Olly and Emma started exploring collage like maquettes which later informed the bigger scale works that feel more dynamic in composition, a reflection of the playful experimentation in which they began.

2007 - 2010 Wimbledon College of Art, BA Fine Art (Painting)

Selected Exhibitions
2023 Tangram duo show, JGM Gallery, London UK
2022 Studio Response 03, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2022 Haven, Aylmer Hall, Steingold Contemporary, London, UK
2022 Offcuts, Exhibition at Morgan Furniture for Clerkenwell Design Week, London, UK
2022 Crown Point Roadside Gallery, Leeds, UK
2021 Concorde Art Prize, Finalist, 180 the Strand, London, UK
2021 Happy Together, UI Artline Installation, Seoul, South Korea 2020 ‘Works On Paper’ Blue Shop Gallery, London, UK
2019 Harder Edge, Hospital Club & Saatchi Gallery, London
2018 Jealous Needs You, Jealous Gallery & Saatchi Gallery, London
2018 Micromegas, Saatchi Gallery, London
2017 Ecstatic Rays, Saatchi Gallery, London

hello@blueshopcottage.com to register for the catalogue

'Saved For Later' by Olly Fathers

'Pleasure is a far away land’ by Kaja Stumpf