OLLY READ
Photo by Laura Purcell
In my teens, during a period of ongoing ill mental health, I found art both a great escape and a way to communicate with those around me what I was experiencing internally. It was at college that I really understand how much art making meant to me and how there was really nothing else I could imagine doing in life.It is through my art that I find I can best communicate my lived experiences, observations of the world around me and my larger beliefs.
I find the instinctual, pre-verbal, sensational nature of art makes it so uniquely direct and indirect. I live for the opportunities I have had to collaborate and work side-by-side with fellow artists. The energy that comes about in a studio housing multiple artists is like nothing else. I have been deeply impacted by times in which people have reached out to me to tell me the ways in which they connect to my works, what more could an artist want?
My relationship with Sawtooth ARI began in 2019 when I was awarded prize annually awarded by the director of Sawtooth ARI to a graduating art student at UTAS Inveresk campus. Since that time I have become a member of the organisation’s board. At Sawtooth I have found community, friendship and the most amazing encouragement.
It is an honour to be invited to participate in this event as it represents such an incredible milestone for Sawtooth as an ARI and an opportunity to look back, thank those who have made it what it is and those wonderful people who are making it the much needed home of experimental and contemporary art it is today.
Biography
Olly Read is a multidisciplinary artist born, living and working in limilinaturi/Devonport in lutruwita/Tasmania. He identifies as a trans man and his artistic practice explores the experience of being human in a flesh suit via three dimensional explorations of the internal psyche.
From baroque pearls as teeth and pantyhose stitched in frames as the 'skin-we-live-in', to pulsating robotics in soft sculpture: Read interrogates ideas of beauty, shame, pride, perception, gender and sexuality.
Read holds a Masters of Fine Art from UTAS (2022) after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts with first class Honours (2019) from the same. He has exhibited at Devonport Regional Gallery, Sawtooth ARI multiple times, Plimsoll Gallery (UTAS), Powerhouse Gallery (UTAS) and The Long Gallery (Salamanca Arts Centre).
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