Olivia Punnett is an artist, curator, and lecturer working across printmaking, installation, film, and projection. She holds an MA with Distinction in Fine Art (2013 AHRC award recipient) and received a 2015 SIA commission from Sheffield Institute of Arts. Her work appears in collections at the British Library, The Tetley, The Ruskin Archive, and Tate Library and Archive.
Studio Location: Haarlem Artspace in Wirksworth, Derbyshire
Practice Description: Punnett uses printmaking as both process and outcome, incorporating sculpture, installation, and projection. Her work examines time, remembered imagery, and photochemical marks, often beginning with 120 film photographs. She employs distortion, blur, reflection phenomenology, and handmade glass or lenses to create separation from original images, exploring themes of loss, memory, place, and moment through concealment and revelation. The natural world features prominently throughout her practice.
Career Path: Started with a foundation course at Falmouth College of Arts but left early. After moving to the Caribbean and returning to the UK, she resumed practice around 2011. Her MA at Sheffield Hallam proved transformative, emphasizing landscape connection's importance.
Interdisciplinary Approach: Working across multiple disciplines allows flexibility with space, light, and simultaneous imagery. She references Walter Benjamin's concept of "auras" and values analogue technology's ontology, particularly the photochemical mark's properties.
Paper as Material: Her Paper Gallery residency deepened her understanding of paper's historical narrative and intrinsic qualities. Rather than viewing paper as merely a blank canvas, she explores how its surface qualities, translucency, and texture contribute meaningfully to finished works.
Conceptual Interests: Punnett pursues "Proustian in-betweens" connecting to ephemeral phenomena—shadows, reflections, memories. She draws inspiration from phenomenology of reflection, Gaston Bachelard's poetics of space, and the understanding that people remember differently. She frequently incorporates fictional elements into her work.
Recent Inspirations: Tai Shanni's exhibition at The Tetley profoundly affected her, particularly its feminine power and integration of monologues, storytelling, and voice—ancient, human elements.
Admired Artists: Trisha Donnelly, Tacita Dean (for analogue media use and ephemeral subjects), Susan Hiller, Becky Beasley, Katherine Mager (photographer), and Robert Rauschenberg (for composition and photographic transfer techniques).
Recent Exhibition Venues: Manchester Contemporary, Paper Gallery Manchester solo show "Every Point of the Universe is Also the Centre" (March), and curated "Where Rock & Hard Place Meet" by Victoria Lucas at Haarlem Artspace for Wirksworth Festival.
For more about Olivia's work visit her website: www.oliviapunnett.com