Sculptor and woodworker Olive Gill-Hille’s work is evocative and fluid. Her finished timber pieces bear no sharp edges – a testament to her hours of carving and sanding. In fact, if it weren’t for the beautiful wood grains, you’d be forgiven for mistaking them as having been moulded out of clay. 

‘It’s a very physical process,’ Olive explains. ‘A lot of myself goes into each work, partly because of how labour intensive it is. If I’ve been carving or sanding all day, I’ll feel it.’ 

Having studied Sculpture and Spatial Practice at the Victorian College of Arts, Olive finished feeling unsatisfied with her lack of practical skills. Undeterred, she then pursued study in Furniture Design at RMIT, during which she spurned sculpture in favour of creating functional pieces. 

‘It felt freeing and allowed me to better understand materials and processes,’ she says. 

Now, no longer forsaking sculpture but embracing it alongside more functional design, Olive produces both art and furniture – and, a lot of the time, pieces that navigate the space between. 

Last year she debuted her first solo exhibition, TRUNK, at Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert in Sydney. This year, she’s been working on a special piece for the inaugural Melbourne Design Fair as part of Melbourne Design Week. 

The piece in question; Nocturne, has been in the works for over a year, and as the name might suggest, was dreamt up during a few sleepless nights.   

Olive takes us through her mesmerising practice and sheds some light on Nocturne:

Talk us through your design process! How does a finished product get designed from start to finish?

The process starts with watercolours – sketching and painting is my method of working things out. Depending on the piece, I may stack laminate timber, which is a process that involves dressing, cutting, gluing and joining lengths of timber in arranged layers and then carving. For other pieces, I’ll find a whole chunk of timber and intuitively carve this using specialist wood-carving bits on angle grinders, chainsaws, gauges, rasps and chisels. Maybe surprisingly, the most transformative part of the process in the work is the sanding, it’s where the work gets smoothed out and is elevated into resembling the final form.

How physical is your practice and how does this impact you and how you work?

It’s a very physical process. A lot of myself goes into each work partly because of how labour intensive my practice is. I usually make a work from start to finish, completely by myself. If I’ve been at the studio carving or sanding all day, I’ll feel it. I like knowing I’ve put the effort and time in. When I see the finished object, it’s always rewarding knowing I’ve produced it through hard work.

What’s the hardest part about your job?

I’ve always said sanding is the hardest part, because it’s definitely the longest and most arduous part of the process, but lately I’ve found myself enjoying the rhythm of it and it’s become almost meditative. Maybe the hardest part is finding enough hands to help me manoeuvre some of my pieces – the largest works are very heavy and moving these by myself is challenging. I share a factory with some lovely cabinet makers and there was one instance where I had to ask seven of them to help rotate an especially heavy piece.

And the best?

A lot of woodworkers say this, but putting the last coat of finish on a work is one of the most satisfying feelings. For some art forms it’s hard to know when a work is truly ‘finished’, but for me, I know once I’ve put on that layer of finish that my work is done.

Tell us about your upcoming exhibition and ‘Nocturne’… What inspired this piece and how long have you been working on it?

Nocturne is a sculptural, functional artwork – its functionality rests as an occasional or entrance table. The idea of Nocturne started over a year ago when I was first working on my debut solo exhibition, TRUNK, at Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert. It came about because during late nights where I would lie in bed and feel like I was being pulled in lots of directions. Nocturne was, in part, inspired by that feeling of juggling lots of things at once.

Nocturne is a music and art reference meaning, ‘how the night feels’ or ‘night scene’ and after I had completed the work, seeing it and thinking back to those nights where the work was conceived, ‘how the night feels’ is fundamental to what this piece is.

You can find Olive’s work at Melbourne Design Fair, Warehouse 16, 28 Duke Street, Abbortsford, from March 16 – March 20.