Chartwell Notes

The subject of cauldrons was a familiar theme in Olsen’s work in the late 1980s and links her with other feminist painters of the time.

As art historian Elizabeth Eastman wrote in Art New Zealand’s Issue 26 in 1983: Her work was linked “in a very general sense with recent feminist art, where content is a primary concern. Not that Olsen's works have a particularly feminist content: but at the same time, I feel there is much about her method of working, her use of materials, that has links (connections rather than influences) with recent art by women artists both in New Zealand and elsewhere...Such use of the techniques of binding, bondage, bandaging, wrapping, can be actions of healing, protection, nurture. The Cauldron works also have this sense of mystical healing properties."