In her new exhibition at City Art Depot, Ōtautahi artist Olivia Chamberlain presents meticulously structured abstract works in dynamic compositions of colour, form – and always line. Ahead of her exhibition she spoke with Sally Blundell in her central city studio. The shape of a line opens 5.30pm Tuesday 17 June and runs through to 7 July 2025.
crease, acrylic and flashe on canvas, 340 x 275mm, 2025
Sally Blundell: Let’s begin with the title. ‘The shape of a line’ is oxymoronic – a line doesn’t have width or depth. Why did you choose this as a title?
Olivia Chamberlain: I was reading a book about colour theory – this line was just part of a larger passage of text but those few words stood out for me. It kind of described what I am doing and yes, it is an oxymoron but the works begin with a line drawing, so in my mind they can’t exist without a line. And I’m curious about what people see when they look at the works – if they see the linear element or if they see the composition more as blocks or shapes or forms.
When you say it begins with a line, are you using the title to deliberately draw attention to that line? A lot of your previous works have titles like plane, angle, slope – are you guiding the viewer to the construction of the work?
Yes, definitely. That is the part that interests me the most – the process and the construction of the work. I don’t like to instruct the viewer too much but I think you can suggest or give cues. I keep a list of words that I’m always adding to, what I’m thinking about or the elements, like pleat, ridge, taper.
In all your exhibitions you work with composition – colour, form and flat planes of paint – but each time you take these elements in a slightly different direction.
I think with each body of work I have investigated further an aspect of my previous work. For this show I actually started off looking at cropped photographic images of previous works.
These were the photographs for the book from your exhibition at CoCA, with Sam Towse?
Yes. For the documentation of the show, the photographer gave us these really cropped images. When I came back to the studio I was still thinking about those images as new compositions and seeing where that would take me.
So there is a lot of pre-planning?
I didn’t decide straight away that this is what I was going to do for this show. I decided to do one work directly referencing a cropped image of a previous painting and that worked for me. There was that feeling that there were possibilities with what I was doing.
In many of your previous works there is that play between form and canvas. How different was it to use forms that use the entire, or almost the entire, surface of the canvas, rather being centrally located?
The works do feel more expansive to me. Some of my previous works have had an element of floating, whereas these acknowledge the edge of the picture plane, so they locate the forms in a different way.
In relation to the edge, as opposed to the centre?
Yes.
fold, acrylic and flashe on canvas, 340 x 275mm, 2025
In earlier works, the overlapping forms appear amorphous, less stable somehow. Do you think in these works the boundaries are harder? I can’t get this word ‘folding’ out of my mind.
It’s interesting you say that. I’ve been thinking of different words to describe these works and ‘fold’ was one of them. Previously I’ve made compositions by using paper cut outs. This time I haven’t done that – it’s been a different way of making using line drawings – but still there is some relation back to paper in that way of folding and layering.
I’m interested in the edges of colour and form – are they hard to get right?
It’s dependent on the consistency of the paint and even on the colour. That line (in wedge) is very crisp, but then here it’s slightly more blurred – I had a crisp one underneath then I put a full wash of colour right over the top so, because the tones are similar value, you can hardly see that edge. So the line is not limiting me. It can shift. The boundaries of the colour I have just applied might be a whole rectangle, instead of just this triangle, or that triangle – there is no one line. And the way the lines intersect, where the shapes meet, is different. They are not just meeting along one edge. It can also be a junction where three, four even five lines might cross. Some of the works might have more than one point where that happens.
wedge, acrylic and flashe on canvas, 340 x 275mm, 2025
Like laylines or desire lines, on or under the ground?
That is something I was thinking about with the city – looking at the surface and the way that we can be directed by the paths we should take but then we quite often choose an alternative route, like a desire line.
Some of the forms seem to be drawn to each – they almost collide into each other – others slide over each other. These contrasts give a kind of dynamism to the works.
When the forms butt up it’s like they are sitting on the surface – you get a sense of lack of depth. But when they slide under, it might give an illusion of depth. That’s when the colour is maybe lighter or more washy and it does give a sense of under- and overlapping, although that is dispelled by the texture of the canvas always being present.
You’ve used really bright colours, incendiary almost. Is this to do with the requirement of form or does it reflect your actual environment?
I feel in every show colours get a little more… almost fluorescent. I think I was looking for strong colours to suit the larger, more angular forms. I was also thinking about how my work can quite often reflect the time of year that it was made. Even though these colours may look quite artificial, I think you can find them in nature. Even with the very brightest pink, you would find a geranium that colour. I think my work is quite influenced by the seasons.
Is this a summer show?
Summer, maybe edging into autumn.
No colour charts?
No. Sometimes I will put a colour down and it doesn’t work. So it is mainly about how can I resolve what is going on and if I apply this colour over top, what colour will actually appear? In a way the works are like exercises and each one is a new exercise. In this work (gap) if I had used pink instead of the blue it would have been an entirely different painting. But also, when you are looking at the body of work as a whole, I didn’t want them to all to be same-same. It gives a little reprieve.
gap, acrylic and flashe on canvas, 340 x 275mm, 2025
So you are figuring that out as you go?
Yes, the intuition comes down to the colour rather than the composition, which is generally planned.
Sometimes the colour seems to saturate the canvas, but never completely.
Some areas only have one layer of paint but with others I was trying to figure out the most layers I could have – I think it was five. But each layer behaves slightly differently because the canvas has already been saturated. In this work for example (block) you can see evidence of the orange underneath then the pink is kind of sitting on the weave of the canvas where it hasn’t fully soaked in.
Does this set up new tensions?
I think there’s tension in the intensity of the colour and in how many layers are on one form compared to the next and the direction that the lines are going in, whether they are crossing each other or going the same way and how the forms meet the edge of the canvas.
Do you work to avoid privileging one form or one colour?
Yes. So even though we were talking about the tension in the works there is also balance.
Many abstract artists call on landscape. Would you say your work relates to an urban landscape?
I wouldn’t say that I am looking at landscape as a whole but in recent times I have been looking closely at the urban landscape. The things we were looking at in the (CoCA) show was the human mark-making in the city: the spray-painted arrows, the asphalt repairs, the temporary signs, rather than planned architectural design. It was about noticing that kind of communication that is mostly unseen. To me it is just interesting mark-making and once you start seeing them, the repeated forms and marks, they are everywhere.
