Inter-generational labour lies at the heart of Phillip Rhys Olney’s practice. Hailing from three generations of dockyard workers, he consults the aesthetics of working-class culture - viewing the traces of ancestral and contemporary labour as a repository for legacies, stories and culture. In doing so, he investigates the role of work amid the cultural contexts of class, education and social mobility, seeing employment and labour for a wage as meaningful artistic practice.
Phillip uses materials typically found in these locales of occupation or employment: scaffolding boards, stainless steel, paper and tarpaulin. In doing so, his multimedia practice interrogates the contemporary roles and relevance of sites of traditional working industries. These include more intimate, personal locales such as Southampton Dockyards alongside those more broadly across Britain, and ask to what degree do these spaces collude to form a typically ‘masculine’ national ‘British’ identity.
Phillip graduated as a First-Generation University Student with First Class Honours from the University of Oxford.
Most recently, Phillip graduated with a Distinction as Sir Frank Bowling Scholar at Chelsea College of Art & Design, alongside achieving his Level 2 Diploma in Bench Joinery at The Building Crafts College.
Phillip uses materials typically found in these locales of occupation or employment: scaffolding boards, stainless steel, paper and tarpaulin. In doing so, his multimedia practice interrogates the contemporary roles and relevance of sites of traditional working industries. These include more intimate, personal locales such as Southampton Dockyards alongside those more broadly across Britain, and ask to what degree do these spaces collude to form a typically ‘masculine’ national ‘British’ identity.
Phillip graduated as a First-Generation University Student with First Class Honours from the University of Oxford.
Most recently, Phillip graduated with a Distinction as Sir Frank Bowling Scholar at Chelsea College of Art & Design, alongside achieving his Level 2 Diploma in Bench Joinery at The Building Crafts College.