Goldsmiths CCA – Olivia Sterling: Really Rough Scrubbing Brush

Olivia Sterling’s (b. 1996, Peterborough) new body of work, commissioned by the CCA as part of the Episodes programme, focuses on colour-changing bodies through tanning or fake tan, on the stage of the bacchanalian British package holiday. The former transforms white bodies into a desired category of beauty, one that paradoxically runs contra to entrenched racial prejudices against darker skin tones. Figures rub food into their skins and lounge scantily clad at the poolside, the palette of colours accentuating pink skin, red sunburn, and messy traces of exuberant consumption.