My first encounter of Olly French was an email from him that arrived whilst I was hairless in sub-zero temperatures in Midrand, staying with wonderful family in an equestrian estate and having my veins and cells burnt away by chemo (something I am eternally grateful for). I had various online projects at the time: getting my first L6 Hellenic pupils through their A Level exams, via email and the newly emergent WhatsApp on my Nokia phone with qwerty pushbutton keyboard; creating my first line of iPad works and being what must have been Lance Armstrong’s very last supporter (how heroes fall). Olly was undergoing his own health challenges, and he introduced himself to me and we had a meeting of minds. We also had a sharing of the things people say to you when you’re sick (“I just know it will be alright- I don’t know how I know it, but I know it…”).

Twelve years or so later, I had the singular pleasure of curating Olly’s show, The Songs We Used to Sing at The Arches @ Aberfoyle. It was splendid, the most beautiful works in an extraordinary gallery and I was very proud to be an associated with the exhibition. Olly’s paintings are meditations, they embody the deep thought, searching and investment of the artist who became my friend. It was a pleasure to write about his work for the catalogue, which I have posted below.

The Songs We Used to Sing

There is a space beyond words and language and outside of symbolism and representation. Skirting the edges of that space is a type of hypnogogia, where a confluence of the suggested forms, elements of colour, lines, space and depth bought about by the artist, and the perceptions, experiences and intuitions of the spectator meet. Between the artist’s rich lexicon and the vulnerability of the spectator,  a wordless dialogue is invoked and a fertile place of meaning emerges. Here, there is nostalgia. Here, there is memory. Here also, are the traces of shared experiences, connections, trauma and vulnerability. Predictably, contradictions are inherent; elements of loneliness, isolation and alienation also inhabit this place. 

In this place, the present is always, inevitably and unceasingly, the past. Within this place, amidst the complexities and harmony, the almost-defined, allusions and veiled ideas, are enshrined the songs we used to sing. 

The Arches @ Aberfoyle is proud to present the first solo exhibition of Olly French. It is a body of work created over the last several years, built on the foundations of a lifetime engagement with the visual arts, design and music. He has woven together threads that have their roots within both distant memories of previous decades, with others drawn from the staggeringly complex recent past and present of his native Zimbabwe. Like any of us, moments of trauma and ecstasy become embedded within the mundane of our histories and become part of our being, located within a context in constant state of flux. 

French’s work is a contemplation of not only what it constitutes to be, but what it constitutes to have been, in place and time. Through multiple layers the artist  explores a sense of remembering and recognition within the passage of time, ever in motion like the wake of a vessel; where the intersection of present/past is a tenuous, indefinable moment and where the transition between the clarity of the recent past and the vaguer distance is imperceptible. But the undying, expanding waves of energy go on, intersecting and impacting, becoming part of the unending dialogue of existence. 

There is no claim to any universality of language, this is a personal and introspective series of works. Nevertheless, within the multitude of human endeavours the visual arts hold a particular territory, one in which a sense of non-linguistic communication is possible. Within these works, the spectator will find aspects of recognition and understanding, and it is in these elements that the true value of French’s work resides. Within the harmony and occasional discord, the colour fields, forms, depths and volumes, for a moment, it is possible for the viewer to see that this is our place, our time, our history: Where you have been, so have I; what you have seen, so too have I; what is in you, is also in me. 

What you have so eloquently described, are the songs we used to sing.

Greg Shaw,

Curator.

7th September, 2024.