Steve Oliver is best-known for his filmic, constructed photographic works made with material sourced from Internet searches. His associative, editorial approach to image-making draws upon the possibilities presented by vast, searchable image databases and search algorithms. Incorporating images culled from advertising, journalism, surveillance capture, social media and family snaps, the work is a literal blending of the public and the private.
His moving image works are made by applying simple all-over editing techniques (re-photographing, re-sequencing, cropping, clipping etc) to video material culled from Internet searches. Drawing attention to the structural elements of the source image, or creating new ones
Thematically, his practice circles issues of provenance, privacy, censorship, authenticity and the struggle to extract a signal from the noise of the internet. The extreme specificity of the work, rendered through prosaic subject matter generates a psychological tension; never quite narrative, nor symbolic.
Steve was born in Manchester, England. He has exhibited widely, showing work across the UK, Europe and the United States. He holds an MA in Fine Art from MMU, and teaches in the School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology at the University of Salford. He works out of Rogue Artist Studios CIC