Oliver Hill is a New Zealand artist who has studied at the Dunedin School of Art. Throughout Hill’s life, great interest has been found in modifying different objects, from anything electronic to anything mechanical. He would modify or re-engineer them to the point of being far more unreliable than once before, but far more exciting for him to experience personally.

This is where Hill’s painting has stemmed from. Manipulating the world around him in visual form to where the paintings he creates are an expression of the world as we know it, portrayed in an abstract vibrant form. From Hill’s perspective, this is a means of re-engineering in itself.

Hill has always questioned why he paints, however throughout his time at art school, he has gained a deeper understanding of what this question means although he may never fully understand the answer. Through careful consideration, Hill has come to realise that a primary reason as to why he paints, is to progress self exploration and this question of ‘why’. In a sense, he paints in order to figure out why he paints. 

Hill’s series of works “Copy and Paste” work off of the subconscious thought, where childhood memories of certain toys such as the ‘race car play mat’ can be seen in the works. Roadways portraying a city like structure intertwining dislocated buildings gives a glance into how the world may have been portrayed from the eyes of a very new life. Loud vibrant colour, repetitive shape and form, and unusually familiar objects give an almost unsettling feeling of a world once forgotten to your own mind. Now making an appearance as a static painting, forgotten memories arise, forcing the mind to wander into the unknown.