Oliver Ventress
With a practice combining video, sculpture and installation, Oliver Ventress explores philosophies of being as a medium. This often encompasses unknowns such as the future of the world and notions of what will remain once human beings no longer inhabit the Earth. There is a particular preoccupation with extraterrestrial beings and potential visitation - working in response to seeking, being in pursuit of, and waiting. There is an attempt to communicate to above by using the terrain itself – to find common ground. By splitting components of the landscape apart from each other – sky, earth, sun, water – Ventress attempts to understand the planet sculpturally. The piece The End (2024) is installed in an exhibition where all that remains is the terrain below our feet and the sun in the sky, and the audience invited to walk amongst this empty landscape.
Working with rudimentary analogue technology and with concerns of an uncertain future, work becomes a series of documents, occupying a physical space in plastic casing, away from the instability of cyberspace and digital corruption. They wait to be discovered by our successors: human or otherwise. Footage is recorded data: it exists post-event, attempting to provide evidence for something which is unproven, or unidentified. Videos on cassette tapes produce a linear timeline or pathway of a journey set in time. Placed onto monitors or framed as stills they become objects to be encountered, providing a visual investigation into movement; presence; potentiality.
Other noteable works have included a sonic sculpture ringing at the frequency of the moon (Hollow Moon, 2023), an 8mm cassette film of a series of attempts to make contact with aliens (Extraterrestrial, 2017), the formation of a UFO spotting network (ongoing archive), a para-terrestrial seance (The Ventress Test, 2019) and the documented seeking of a sea monster (Pursuit, 2019).
Lived Experience
Growing up in Norwich, Oliver failed his A Levels, felt a bit useless and for various circumstances needed to leave the city. He was offered a place to study art at the University of Lincoln, and never looked back. He has lived in Lincoln for 12 years, and become an advocate for DIY, artist-led activity in the city, working with General Practice for four years and then co-founding BASE with his partner Madara Vimba, with a shared vision to support low-income, emerging artists with studio spaces, exhibitions and residencies, especially those with LGBTQ experience.
