JOSÉ GARCÍA OLIVA
José García Oliva is a Venezuelan artist based in London. He studied Fine Arts at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, supported by a Spanish Ministry of Education scholarship. In 2020, he completed a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in London, where he received the Augustus Martin Print Prize for his innovative use of printmaking.
Oliva has undertaken residencies at Gasworks, Hospitalfield, Forgan Arts Centre, Casa Wabi and SOMA, and has been recognised with awards including the Ibero-American Visual Art Prize and Next Generation Please at Bozar, Brussels.
Recent solo exhibitions include As Long as It Yields (Timespan, Scotland), Tonada de Galopeo (Abra, Caracas) and Out of Hours (Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster). He has also received commissions and grants from V&A East, Metal and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. His work is held in the public collections of Lancaster Arts and Timespan. He is currently an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins.
Oliva practice engages with outsourced labour systems, migrant economies, and the hierarchies that shape everyday urban life, interrogating how these structures are experienced, negotiated, and reproduced within shared social spaces. He works through long-term collaborations that prioritise co-authorship and sustained relationships, influencing how the work is made, shown, and circulated. His projects often unfold through enacted social exchanges or site-responsive provocations, taking the form of performances, drawings, sculptures, and public interventions.
