Creative Matters with Oliver Cain

Oliver Cain is an English born artist who immigrated to Aotearoa New Zealand in 2013. His work covers a wide range of topics and materials and takes many forms from ceramics to sculpture to installation and painting. His artworks push the boundaries between conceptualism and post-pop art.

As a proud member of the queer community, Oliver uses his work to examine, question and criticise the relationships between gender, (homo) sexuality, and society's misconceptions about these themes. His work initiates a conversation between avant-garde artistic production and human perceptions about queer sexuality.

Ollie and I have such an inspiring, honest chat in this episode. He reflects on how he dealt with being gay growing up in the UK, how he navigated through this time and how the decision in his second year at Unitec to express his queer identity through his art gave his work 'wings' and 'heart'. He's passionate about creating work that engages and questions people, making people stop, engage, react and think.

We talk in depth about a number of his provocative and possibly confronting works, his fascinating project where he placed a banana in urinals at international galleries and how he has used toilets and other everyday objects as vessels for communicating ideas and telling stories. He comments on the challenges of being an artist in New Zealand and why he has decided to move back to Europe.

This episode is like no other and a fascinating insight into conceptual art and the life and work of Oliver Cain.