What was the real name of the woman who studied under Martin Puryear?
Oliver was born Bronwyn Gooda on 22 February 1959, in Gum Flat, west of Inverell, in New South Wales. Her parents were Milton, a farmer turned greenkeeper, and Wendy, who worked in a pharmacy. Her creativity was nurtured from a young age. Aged just eight, Oliver attended weekend art classes in Inverell run by Ian Howard, who went on to become dean of the college in Sydney where she would later study. As she was dux of her school, her parents expected her to go on to university. However, Oliver wished to pursue a creative career. When she told her parents of her plans, her mother replied, "Darling, your father and I are very pleased you're going to art school, but if you'd been a son, I think we'd be a little disappointed." A rift subsequently developed between her and her family that resulted in her having no contact with them for 25 years.After leaving school, Oliver studied and worked in Sydney. She had intended to enrol in painting classes, but a computer error placed her in the sculpture course: she later said "I knew straight away I was in the right place".She graduated from the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education in 1980. Winning a New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship in 1983, she then completed a master's degree at Chelsea School of Art in 1984. Her work was influenced by Richard Deacon, Antony Gormley and Martin Puryear under whom she studied while in England. Upon returning from the United Kingdom, she immediately met with further success, when in 1984 she won a Moet & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship. In 1988 she was granted a period as artist-in-residence in the city of Brest on the coast of Brittany, where she studied Celtic metalworking techniques.
Bronwyn Gooda