Olivia Bax: artist talk

This display, curated by Nigel Walsh (Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art), revisits the remarkable exhibition mounted at Temple Newsam House during a time of global conflict. It has been reimagined for our own times with the input of contemporary artist Olivia Bax, a ‘third guest’ in this imaginative confluence of two esteemed yet controversial modernist artists, Jacob Epstein and Matthew Smith.

Olivia Bax was born in Singapore and spent some of her schooling in Scotland, near Perth. Graduating from Byam Shaw School of Art twenty years ago, she spent her early twenties working as a studio assistant to Anthony Caro and after this working on the sculptor Charles Hewlings’ archive.  The unique sculpture background, and consequent familiarity with some of 20th Century Modernism’s principal sculptural languages gave Bax the capacity to absorb and understand these and utilize them to her own ends. It has also led to her gaining significant recognition in recent years, through the award of the Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor prize in 2016 and the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award in 2019.

Bax’s connections with Leeds include her time as a Research Fellow at Henry Moore Institute in 2023 and more recently a solo exhibition Double Take at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (26 September 2026 – 14 March 2027).