Every month Brave Island runs a Young Creative of the Month fund, where we spotlight a local young creative with an interview on our blog, and support them with funding of £100. For August, it’s Performance Artist Ollie Luter. This fund launches at the beginning of every month, you can apply to be Young Creative of the Month for September here.
1. Please can you tell us about your creative practice?
I explore performance art through sculpture currently focusing on subjects that include embarrassment, self identity, limit, queerness, and lgbtq+ matters. My latest performance was based on negative comments on food, the cost of living, and embarrassment. I walked from Camberwell to Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, and Parliament, dressed as a reduced Tesco egg and cress sandwich box. While walking I acted erratic and rude to the general public.
2. Your work involves finding your own limits, what’s the closest you’ve come to this so far?
The closest I have come to finding my limit within creating art was my performance at the Oxo Tower on Southbank, I laid on the floor naked with my face on a plate of golden syrup for the duration of 3-4 hours (this was in the middle of February so it was very cold). I feel that this is my closest achievement to finding my limit as it fully took away my confidence in my surroundings, comfortableness, my identity and overall my own health.
Throughout the performance I was asking questions as to ‘why am I doing this’, ‘is this good for my mental health’, ‘is this worth the pain and mentally provoking thoughts’. I also feel another reason as to why I feel I have achieved finding an essence of my limit was the public’s reaction, I was so interested that throughout the performance the public were not fond and were worried about my safety. One family put a coat on me and tried to call an ambulance. I felt that this reaction was not what I wanted as it put people in worry. This piece wasn’t about the audiences reaction but it ended up to be.
3. What’s your next project?
My next project I have been focusing on is the opposite of my limit performance, rather then finding my limit and trying to find things that provoke me, I am looking at what I find comfortable. Most of the time my safe place is the toilet, it’s my little 10-20 minute getaway where I can watch TikTok and vape. Because this is safe for me I wanted to see if I could produce this same comfort but in a performance, I hopefully will be creating and performing this piece at the end of November.
4. Where can people find your work if they’d like to support you?
People can find my art on Instagram and YouTube, this will consist of work I create at University studying sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts.
