Olivia Madland Shorter is an artist who explores rural identity. In her practice, she investigates this identity within contemporary society through sculpture and installation, finding inspiration from the land, earth, and soil, and what may come from it.

Repetitive and rhythmic, her artworks become sculptural and performative as they evolve. In tune with earth systems, her practice aims to locate itself around natural seasons, following traditions of sowing, cultivation, harvest and gathering, before the processing of natural materials. As a result, this manifests in durational and experiential works, deploying both photography and sculpture, with the aim of exploring the agency of materials, found and excavated, and how they interact with us and the space around them.

Recent work has been inspired by tools and equipment used in textile processing, focusing locally on the artist’s homeland of Suffolk, a county known for its medieval wool wealth and agricultural advancements. Madland Shorter brings into question these traditions, both archaic and modern, the communities that practice them, and the land they inhabit.