Olivia Strange ‘It Softens The Blow, That Deep Melodic Bliss’

Pulling together the multifarious strands of Strange’s practice “It Softens the Blow, That Deep Melodic Bliss” explores notions of escape and survival through snapshot moments of euphoria and pleasure, as an act of resistance.

The work celebrates the freedom and intimacy found within singular moments in varying spaces from the domestic environment, the natural landscape to the rave scene, that offer a sense of safety to hold multiple truths simultaneously whilst providing a portal through which to explore identities away from the constraints of critical thought.

Through themes of dis/embodiment, movement, touch and tenderness, healing and empowerment, connection and ‘belonging’, Strange explores intimate moments in time that elicit a sense of escape and diversion from programmed ideas of self into altered states of consciousness and where emotions can be discharged in spaces and dimensions that provide transient moments of relief from the boundaries of day to day normative realities.