Artist Interview, Olive Gill-Hille.
“In Australia, our timbers are worlds away from the European and American varieties. Where all our woodworking knowledge comes from is often from hundreds of years old where they have certain tools and certain ways of doing things that are actually for oaks, walnuts and timbers that are slow growing and have fine grain and do things that are a bit more expected. Australian timbers are actually a really different matter because they react to things in really different ways.”
We’re pleased to introduce our conversation with Olive Gill-Hille after her commission for the Rock House, a Perth-born, Melbourne-trained artist and designer whose work lives at the boundary between sculpture and utility.
Olive’s creative journey began in Melbourne, where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (specialising in Sculpture) at the VCA in 2015, before broadening her skillset with an Associate Degree in Furniture Design at RMIT. What sets her practice apart, is her intuitive approach to timber — often salvaged native wood — through which she sculpts organic, bodily forms that seem to breathe and shift.
In her work, Olive disrupts traditional narratives of woodwork and design by foregrounding the feminine gaze. She reclaims the act of shaping the female form in timber — not as object, but as subject — drawing from her personal experience and the physicality of her surroundings.
In this interview, we trace how Olive navigates her dual identity as artist and designer, explore the interplay between intuition, material, and form, and ask how her latest explorations are pushing her work into new expressive territory.
Your practice is so unique in a way and it’s interesting to think about how you perhaps started and then have evolved your practice to where it is now? What was your first experience working with wood like?
Olive: It was at the second degree which was an associate degree of furniture design, and I think I had always been attracted to wood as a material but really didn’t know how to work with it. Wood is not something you can just go at — I really do think there is a skill set you need to develop and learn, and I’m still learning. To be honest, the first time I started working with wood I remember thinking, wow, there is a lot of measuring. We were doing dove tails, and I remember at first being like I love wood but far out this is pretty boring, it wasn’t my jam obviously. When it’s required, I’ve done work before where I’ve had to do butterflies (joins) and I can do it, but it’s not my favourite part.
Jessica: Yes, it can be brutal, it’s so precise. You seem to have since evolved your practice since those days which has allowed you more freedom to respond directly to the grain and the timber itself.
Olive: Yes it has, and I think that also comes from when I was being taught by pretty much the only female lecturer and she was a theory lecturer. Furniture making is a male dominated industry and I do feel like it always has been. A lot of the way people work with wood is kind of dictated by centuries of how men do things, so I feel like there are lots of female wood workers now probably that have a different way of thinking.
Jessica: It sounds like a beautiful process working with wood but also a challenging one, I was wondering do some species of wood pose more challenges than others to work with in your practice?
Olive: There are woods that react really differently. In Australia, our timbers are worlds away from the European and American varieties. Where all our woodworking knowledge comes from is often from hundreds of years old where they have certain tools and certain ways of doing things that are actually for oaks, walnuts and timbers that are slow growing and have fine grain and do things that are a bit more expected. Australian timbers are actually a really different matter because they react to things in really different ways. Everything related to eucalyptus and native to Western Australia are super high in gum and oil content so they don’t dry in the same way, they have natural defences for bushfires so that means that if heat comes near it they’ll start to expand in a different way then oaks and walnuts because they’ve become what they are because of the natural environment. People often ask me “do you use gauges and chisels”? Yes, I do. I do use hand tools sometimes, but often I don’t because with the materials I work with they are so splintery and to carve them with chisels is a huge challenge. Different materials definitely present different issues…. I think I’m still figuring them out in lots of ways, I think everyone is still figuring them out.
Jessica: You mentioned you work mainly Australian species of wood, how do you go about sourcing the material for your works?
Olive: Yes, I seek out timber from places where I can get permission. I go down to Margaret river, also the great southern region, and sometimes you’ll be driving down a highway and something that farmers do is where they get big poles of wood and just burn them and often they’re left out there for a couple of years just sitting there, and so if I see them just sitting there on the side of the road I’ll go approach those farmers and ask “do you want that?” or “are you burning that?” and often they’ll be like “no, you can have it.” Or I’ve got friends who have trees that need to be taken down, golf clubs and parks as well if I go and ask if they’re just going to make it into woodchips, I’ll ask for it. So I’ve got a lot at the studio at the moment that’s still way too green, so that will just sit here for a couple of years, or I’ll go take it to the kiln. I think one of the main reasons I use Australian timbers is not because its necessarily the most beautiful timber, it’s also about ethically sourcing materials, trying to lower our carbon footprint as well. That’s the thing about walnut and old, slow growing timbers from Europe and America is that they have to come on ships and they might have to go elsewhere after that, so there’s such an environmental impact from that. In lots of ways timber can be the most environmentally sustainable building material, and in other ways, if the practices around shipping and moving that timber require travel over great distances, then it’s really not.
Jessica: Incredible! With these amazing pieces of wood that you find, I was wondering if the natural shapes in the wood inspire your final work, or do you approach the wood that you’ve found with a design you’ve already conceived?
Olive: For me, there are really two different starting points. Sometimes I start with an idea and then I have to figure out a way of making that work; it might be a matter of laminating and joining timbers, that’s where I am sort of dictating the work and have more direction. Other times I might have an idea and look for timbers to utilise that with or I might just see piece of wood that really speaks to me and I’ll start work on it. I think with [‘Embrace’] here was an idea of the direction to go but it was also about the timber I had available and what was going to work for that, and so that dictated the final shape a lot. I sometimes say it’s like a collaboration with nature.
Jessica: That’s a really beautiful concept. Something I find interesting asking artists as well, is what they listen to while they’re spending time making these incredible (and time consuming pieces) What are you listening to whilst you’re working?
Olive: True crime podcasts usually! ..... I think it’s just called true crime or something, it’s got a really thick accented Australian dude. What else am I listening to?.... I think it really depends – you can’t just listen to music, there are some days I only listen to music but maybe it’s really terrible music like top of the chart sort of rubbish. I listen to a lot of audio books actually! I like to listen to audio books because I feel like I never read books, so last year I think I listened to like twenty audio books, so I like to say I read twenty books last year even though I actually didn’t.
Jessica: Hahaha, I know the feeling. What are some of those audio books you’ve been listening to?
Olive: I actually just finished listening to Julia Fox’s autobiography… so there is stuff like that. Last year I also listened to things like The Secret Garden which was actually really nice, and then some Agatha Christie, Rebecca – classics – Treasure Island…. So lots of different things. I think I’m about to start the Britney Spears autobiography actually.
Olive: The other thing about sanding that I find is I get really cyclical thoughts. If I’ve got an issue or something, I’ve had an argument with someone, I’ll have that same argument five... no fifteen times in my head that day because it’s such a monotonous task. So that’s why I like having a story to listen to or something… or even not an argument, it could be something positive, it could be something like ‘I’m going to Hong Kong next week’ and that’s just like all I’m thinking about or where I’m going to have my first meal, something like that. Even though the carving is very creative and requires quite a level of concentration and usually I’ll just be listening to music if I’m carving, but once you’re sanding that’s a lot of hours... its not involved in the same way.
Jessica: There’s a nice little juxtaposition— carving, sanding and true crime!
Olive: They’re just switch off sort of things, and there’s something meditative about sanding. My brain, probably ADHD, brain doesn’t stop so I need to put something really dumb on to make it stop…
Jessica: Speaking of time. There’s so much detail that goes into your work, can you give us a general indication of the timeframe it might take you to make a single piece?
Olive: It really depends. It can really change a lot, like sometimes I’m really struggling with a piece, sometimes I’ve got half-finished pieces around the studio where I’ve carved it but don’t really like how it looks and just left it because I’ll come back to it in 6 months sometimes. I’ve just finished a piece recently that was half carved for ages and thought “oh maybe there is something there and I don’t need to ditch it.” Yeah, it really changes and also in the past if I really love something… it was actually a wall panel, but I really loved it and I was really excited about making it, that happened in three days from start to finish. I carved it quite aggressively and then just really wanted to see it finished so just spent 12 hours or 13 hours for 3 days trying to get it finished. A wall panel is a less involved process anyway, but it can really depend on how much I like the piece or not, and it can also depend on deadlines – I really try and make deadlines work for people, I’m usually able to shuffle things around enough that I can try and get something done in the right amount of time. I remember last year, my big solo, a lot of people were asking me how long that took, and honestly it didn’t take me as long as everyone thought! I was really happy with the work, it was a fun and easy process, it kind of happened naturally, organically, it wasn’t a struggle at all. And there are other times, sometimes with commissions – not this one – but with other commissions where its been like drawing blood out of stones sort of thing.
Olive’s Studio — Images courtesy of the artist
Olive in her studio — Images, courtesy of the artist.