Nadia Odlum

Nadia Odlum is a Sydney-based artist whose practice explores the material language and lived experience of urban space. Their abstract works transform everyday city elements to investigate how bodies and environments interact, focusing on both individual and collective responses to space. An insatiable curiosity for different mediums drives their diverse practice, which spans printmaking, paintings, drawings, sculptures, artists’; books, and public artworks, alongside socially engaged projects, workshops and performance collaborations.

Tell us about your creative process. What drives your practice?

My practice is driven by a deep curiosity about urban environments. I am endlessly fascinated by the material and social textures of our surroundings, and how the spaces and systems we create shape our lives. I make abstract works that transform everyday urban elements to investigate how bodies and environments interact, inviting viewers to engage playfully and critically with the nuances of city life.

I'm very interested in the complex entanglements between art, public participation, and urban development. Rather than thinking of cities as static structures, I try to approach them as dynamic, living assemblages that are constantly shaped by processes of interaction. I pursue this interest through art practice, but also through writing, activism, and interdisciplinary academic work. At the core of my practice is a belief in art's potential to spark critical thinking and foster meaningful change in how we understand and interact with our cities.

What is the relationship between printmaking and your sculpture and installation-based practice?

I am quite omnivorous for mediums; my practice spans so many and I seem to keep adding more! I tend to use different mediums in response to what I feel each project requires.

When I use print, it is usually because I am trying to use repetition and seriality to push an idea, or to explore lots of variations quickly. I love the immediacy of screen printing, and the way unexpected effects of colour or transparency emerge in ways that I often don't anticipate.

I actually have very little formal training in printmaking, but I love to work in print studios because it forces me to inhabit a learner mindset again and again. I have done residencies at the Megalo Print Studio and Kala Art Institute that were enormously productive. I find I produce my best work when I am at the edge of my comfort with a medium, kind of like repeatedly failing my way forward.

Bold colour and a sense of playfulness are prevalent in your work. How do these contribute to your exploration of urban space and its material language?

I like to make works that bring out the playful potential of urban space. There are so many arbitrary rules and systems that govern urban space, and they are often presented to us as unquestionable. But they are not... All systems are co-created in some way, and finding ways to play within, around, against and between them is how we uncover new possibilities.

I see playfulness in artistic practice, and in urban space, as very related to my queerness. It's a way of questioning accepted notions of how things 'are' with a continual reframing to what they 'could be'. Play is a process of asking "what if?".

I think I am just a playful and silly person. I like that this comes across in the work.

How do you use text and symbols to engage with audiences?

For a long time, I have been interested in urban wayfinding signage as a form of social and spatial choreography. To explore this, I use symbols that are common to urban space, like chevrons or arrows.

I like to think of these banal and often overlooked symbols as being part of interweaving and constantly changing systems that shape the movement and encounter of bodies in real time. Reconfiguring them through paintings, prints, drawings, installations, and performance collaborations is a way to tap into these processes, to explore them in ambiguous ways.

In recent years I have started to incorporate text into my work, particularly words that lead to actions. In a similar way to the wayfinding symbols, I am interested in how instructions affect movement, or how words can be subverted through playful bodily interpretation.

Are there any printmakers/artists that influence you?

For a while my work has been influenced by Sol LeWitt, in his use of seriality and systems. Though it may seem strange to think of the very reductive abstraction of LeWitt as playful, I have always thought of the way he followed ideas or systems (even absurd ones) all the way through to their conclusion as a very playful process.

The works Your Combinations and Our Combinations reference a project I did with Kaldor Public Art Projects in 2019, where I responded to Sol LeWitt’s work by creating a playable installation of colourful wooden blocks at the AGNSW. People’s reconfigurations of the blocks led to endless combinations of colours and patterns. I documented some of my favourite ones, and then recombined these through screen printing during a residency at Megalo Print Studio.

My recent work is particularly influenced by Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, in the way she created objects or situations that led to relational exchanges. Other recent influences are Eva Rothschild and Céline Condorelli. In terms of printmaking, I really enjoyed the recent Rauschenberg & Johns: Significant Others exhibition at the NGA. I like all the secrets embedded in Rauschenberg's prints. I've started hiding more secrets in my work since this show.

Finally, what exciting projects are you working on at the moment?

I am working on a PhD at the University of Sydney at the moment, looking at play in urban space and public art. I am also about to present a series of workshops at the Art Gallery of NSW with Kaldor Public Art Projects in response to the exhibition Thomas Demand: The Object Lesson. My workshops will create a 'loose parts play' space incorporating materials and concepts from the exhibition. They will be free and open to all ages. Come play!