Projects

  Market/Place Residency
Jan-March 2024

Olive and Evie share a love of good light, fresh produce and finding the beauty in everyday scenes. Working across illustration and textiles, Market/Place is a collaborative residency and exhibition that draws on the vibrancy of the Sunshine town centre. Olive will use textiles and materials to create a collection of functional one off bags. Evie will use illustration to create a series of visual works. Themes of belonging, curiosity and play will be explored throughout the duration of Market/Place resulting in a series of original works for sale. Feast your eyes on the colour, texture and unnoticed delights of the everyday!

             

Helping Hand Bags
2020-2021

During Melbourne's first COVID lockdown, Olive was looking for a way to give back to the community whilst staying creative. Using the fabric offcuts from her other bag designs she created sets of produce bags.  For the first 60 sets of bags, 100% of each sale went directly to Moving Feast- the result of Victoria’s food social enterprises joining forces to grow, cook and deliver meals to the most vulnerable Victorians as part of the widespread food relief system. So far the Helping Hand Bags project has raised over $2000 supporting the vital work they are doing to create a pandemic food response that creates justice, sustainability and resilience. Olive has sewn over 350 mesh bags and counting!

Changing Room Exhibition

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‘Changing Room’ is a curated exhibition that explores the way in which fashion can be used to celebrate body diversity. The exhibition advocates for the importance of diverse designs, representations and advertising within fashion, and features works that investigate the body’s varied forms with a focus on body positivity. The exhibition aims to survey how Melbourne creators are using fashion and art to promote inclusivity and positive change

The exhibition showcased submissions from RMIT students working across a range of disciplines as well as emerging members of the Melbourne artistic community who are using both social media and DIY methods to celebrate body empowerment.

 

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‘Changing Room’ is curated by Olive Gilbert and Emma North.

Arts Box Residency

 

For the month of April 2018, Olive was the artist in residence at the Maribyrnong City Council’s Artsbox. Supported by Arts and Culture Maribyrnong the Artsbox is a converted shipping container that sits in the heart of Footscray.

Olive and Lily undertook fieldwork amongst the shoppers at the Footscray market.  Working under the project title ‘Bag Lady’, they will investigate the relationship between place and people through the everyday use of the shopping bag. They seek to capture and celebrate the cultural and economic exchange that occurs in the market place. 

The public were invited to join for a walking tour and bag making workshop during the residency, allowing them to reflect upon the materiality of their local area.