b.1986, Russia
Lives and works in London
email: olga.grotova (at) network.rca.ac.uk
instagram: olgagrotova
Olga Grotova takes family history, landscapes, troubled ecologies and experience of displacement as starting points for installations, paintings and performances. Her work involves going on journeys to map and collect histories, mainly concerning the lives and labours of Eastern European women that have been overlooked and erased from the established narratives. These histories alongside the material from the environments where they came from, such as plants, waters and debris lay foundation to paintings and performances. Grotova uses poetry readings, sound and movement, to activate the paintings and create situations through which those marginalised histories can be uncovered and re-articulated in the present.
Education
2014-2016 Royal College of Art, MA Painting
2011 Chelsea College of Art, Post-graduate Diploma, Fine Art
Exhibitions
2019
Solo: Debris on a Luminous Plain, Centrala, Birmingham
Waters of the Volga (performance), Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo
Carrying Histories, Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo
Sans (t)rêve et sans Merci, Cube, Moscow
2018
The First Reading (Performance), Mimosa House, London
XVII. The Age of Nymphs, Mimosa House, London
2017
Blue. 17, Osnova Gallery, Moscow
Seventeen, Centrala, Birmingham
2016
RCA Degree Exhibition, Royal College of Art, London
Notes App, Dyson Gallery, London
2015
WIP show, Royal College of Art, London
RCA Secret, Dyson Gallery, London
2013
Tamizdat, New Holland, St. Petersburg, Russia
Megabodega, Family Business Gallery, New York
2012
Performance, ritual, symbolic action: rite as play, Hayward Gallery, London
A Joyful Archipelago’ Guest Projects, London
A Spring That We Have All Been Waiting For (Performance), Guest Projects, London
Coup D’Etat, Arthaus, London
Guest from the Future, Galerie8, London
Awards
2021 SPACE Artist Award
Arts Council England: Developing Your Creative Practive Award
Residencies
2021 Wysing Arts Center Syllabus VI
2019 Praksis, Oslo
Publications
2019 Carrying Histories, Praksis
2017 ‘The Split’, Alvar Magazine
2012 ‘A Joyful Archipelago’, commissioned by the Outset Fund