Processing: Oliver Abbott

13 February 2026 - 28 June 2026

Oliver Abbott
Second meeting burn 2025
oil on linen, 120 × 180 cm
Image courtesy of the artist © The artist

This exhibition explores how personal and collective histories are constructed by revisiting relics of architecture and infrastructure unique to the Tweed. In Processing, Abbott reveals parallels between the construction of a painting and the way memory distorts, rearranges, and rebuilds its own version of the past. Abbott’s research led to him tracing family history in the region across 3 generations. Embracing the uncertainty and inaccuracy of the visual historic record, Abbott treats these gaps as opportunities to generate new, fictional spaces.

Informed by a background in filmmaking, animation, and architecture, Abbott integrates processes of virtual construction and navigation to form the basis for his paintings.

Recipient of the 2025 Tweed Regional Gallery – National Art School Master of Fine Art (Painting) Residency Award, Abbott’s solo exhibition Processing is the culmination of the artist’s time at the Gallery’s on-site Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio.

Oliver Abbott is represented by Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney.

The Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio is an on-site, live-in studio at the Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre. The Studio is generously supported by benefactor Mr Tim Fairfax AC and named in honour of his mother Nancy Fairfax, who was a great friend of Margaret Olley.

This exhibition is an outcome of the Tweed Regional Gallery – National Art School Master of Fine Art (Painting) Residency Award.
The Partnership between the Gallery and NAS showcases emerging artists in celebration of Margaret Olley’s legacy as a NAS alumna and a supporter of emerging artists.