Australia’s most celebrated art family is taking on the Paris art scene
Dinosaur Designs founders Louise Olsen and Stephen Ormandy along with daughter Camille will show their first joint exhibition in France this year.
To step inside the home of artists Louise Olsen and Stephen Ormandy feels more like walking into a deeply intimate and interactive gallery space. One that’s alive with the stories of both the art and the artists. The house is filled with natural light and caught in a cross-breeze that carries the faintest hint of saltwater off nearby Bronte Beach. And there is art everywhere you look. Of all types. On the walls, works by both Ormandy and Olsen are joined by pieces created by their daughter Camille Olsen-Ormandy, who has clearly inherited the genetic penchant for painting in full, along with the works of various other artists. Sculptures stand silent witness to stalagmites of books. Naturally, nearly every surface is home to at least one, more often many, of the colourful resin creations made by Dinosaur Designs, the brand the couple started four decades ago as a small stall at Sydney’s Paddington Markets and which turned them into household names.
On the day in question, the house is even more alive as hair and make-up artists and stylists quietly rush around helping Olsen-Ormandy and her parents into new positions for the photographer waiting to capture.
During a momentary pause in proceedings as the next frame is set up by the team, I point to a towering abstract piece currently hanging above the dining table, one of Ormandy’s, and query how long it’s been there. There’s a legend, more a rumour really, that every few weeks the artwork in place here is regularly rotated out and replaced with a new piece. How it’s picked, or by what criteria, doesn’t seem as relevant as the delightful truth that they’re surrounded by so much art that they can regularly update their walls at whim.
“We haven’t actually changed that in a while,” admits Ormandy. “Actually, we did a little switcheroo prior to the [photo shoot] yesterday. But recently we’ve been a little bit more static in that space.”
That tradition might be revived sooner rather than later, however, as all three of the Olsen-Ormandy household will hold their first ever group exhibition, aptly named Famille, this September at the Galerie Bessières. The location is the stuff of legend within the world of art: located on the Ile des Impressionnistes (Impressionists’ Island) in Chatou, a 30-minute drive north west of Paris, where you will find perhaps one of the most famous balconies in the history of painting. It was here that the scene for the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s delightfully festive Le Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party) is set.
“The institution that owns that [Renoir] in America has funded the renovation of this old restaurant that was falling to bits,” explains Ormandy the following day when we catch up at the Dinosaur Design head office in Redfern. “It’s a great weekend spot and the gallery is literally inside a château, which was once studios for a number of famous artists over the years.”
Famille offers a rare opportunity to see one of the country’s most well-known creative dynasties showing in a single exhibition. More specifically, they explain, one that spotlights their individual practices. It is absent of any overarching theme aside from the obvious familial ties, which Olsen says gives each of them a chance to speak with their own voice. This was something that her father, John Olsen, himself encouraged his offspring to do throughout his life.
“He was an extraordinary, complex and incredible man and I just learned so much from him … He also in many ways set me free as well,” says Olsen.
“Having a show of the three of us together is a variation of work that we have … [It shows that] even though we’re a family, we actually have got different things to say. And bringing that together, I think, will be an interesting conversation.”
The new collection of work is being created specifically for the French show. There’s no word yet on whether it will return to Australia, but it will build upon ideas that the three artists have been exploring individually.
“I’ve been revisiting my haikus,” Olsen explains. “One of my previous exhibitions focused on haiku, with their 17 symbols. I’m returning to those minimal forms, where paintings are like poetry. When you look at a picture, it’s like reading poetry, and each mark becomes a poem in itself.”
Where Olsen seeks the depth in poetic simplicity, Ormandy’s work will continue the visual language that has long underpinned his painting and sculptural work. His extroverted dialogue traversing colour and form perfectly plays against the more meditative, introverted forms that take place on Olsen’s canvases.
Olsen-Ormandy’s chapter of the exhibit delves into the new generation of creative forces she has met and interacted with via a series of portraits that excavate the immediate world around her. While Famille marks the 25-year-old’s first international exhibition, locally she’s already achieved a notable body of work. Her works have the flattened minimalism that’s brought to life by bold colour, sitting on a similar axis to American painter Alex Katz or a Pierre Bonnard. Their colourful, deceptively naive surfaces have secured collaborations with beauty retailer Mecca, jeweller Cartier for 10 magazine and Australian fashion label Aje.
No theme, perhaps, but do they check in with each other during the process to make sure that it’s coming along nicely? “We’ll show each other our work, but we’ll be honest, too,” says Ormandy.
And there lies another legend associated with the Olsen-Ormandy name: their unflinching honesty.
“[Our family] is very honest,” Olsen admits.
“Perhaps too honest,” adds Olsen-Ormandy.
“I mean, I grew up in a family of artists and part of the joy of that dimension of the family is that critical dialogue, having that honesty and openness,” says Olsen. “You grow so much from it, as brutal as it can be.”
“If we’re visiting each other’s studios, it’s something like, ‘It’s not your best’. I think that’s as far as it goes,” jokes Olsen-Ormandy. “But then you’re like, ‘Oh, god. OK. Got to work on it’.”
Despite the fact that all three artists live together and are represented by the same gallery (Olsen Gallery, which is run by Olsen’s brother Tim, naturally keeping it all in the family), apparently a show of this nature never occurred to them until it was suggested by the family behind Galerie Bessières. “It just never really crossed our minds,” jokes Ormandy, who has had several successful shows there in the past. “We’re all very self-obsessed like most artists, so we want to do our own show.
“We were having a lovely lunch on the balcony of a little restaurant next to [Galerie Bessières] and they suggested it, because they’re aware of Louise’s and Camille’s work, so the director of the gallery asked, ‘Why don’t we do a family group show?’.”
“Doing this exhibit felt like a natural progression in a way,” adds Olsen. “My brother Tim has his gallery in Woollahra and we’d separately had exhibitions there. Camille had an exhibition at his Queen Street space and Stephen and I already have a history of doing exhibitions together.”
This collaborative spirit has always been an integral part of Olsen and Ormandy’s partnership. Not just in their art, or even in their building of a revered Australian design brand. The success of this can be summed up in a rather simple explanation: “We’ve now been friends for [almost] 40 years,” says Ormandy.
That “friendship” began when they met on their first day of art school in the ’80s. “It was instant attraction,” says Ormandy.
They were both 18 and sat next to each other during the student induction process. “I remember, we all had to sit in this circle and do that get-to-know each other thing in the class,” recalls Olsen.
It was Ormandy who broke the ice. “I said, ‘Hi, my name’s Steve. I’m an artist’. We were in a painting class, but no one had any gear, so the teacher suggested going to an art gallery. So, we all went as a group and there’s conversations going around. Anyway, Louise and I kind of gravitated to one another and we were walking around looking at the different paintings and then we were literally standing in front of Five Bells and she says, ‘My dad painted that’. I went, ‘Oh … Louise Olsen’.”
However, some of the typical steps taken by couples, such as getting married, never really occurred to them, says Olsen. “Other things just seemed more important.” Like launching a hugely successful “side hustle” and building a world full of colour and art.
Is this the secret perhaps, to creating the kind of relationship that succeeds in the long game? “I think the other thing [when you don’t marry] is there’s no rules. The idea that you can intellectualise the process of feeling, I think, is where a lot of people end up in trouble,” says Ormandy.
“I think the fundamental thing is having that friendship,” adds Olsen. “Sharing an interest and a passion. And if the friendship really does [last], the relationship stays.”
Famille by Louise Olsen, Stephen Ormandy and Camille Olsen-Ormandy at Galerie Bessières, from September 21 until November 9.
This story is from the July issue of WISH.
