Flowing, Welding, Creating: The “Slasher” Practice of Olkamll
- artyap6skipclass
- Mar 9
- 5 min read
After three years, I find myself at Chelsea College of Arts for a studio visit with Final Year Fine Art student, Nick Pang, aka. Olkamll (pronounced: ol-ka-mole).
Olkamll is a Multidisciplinary artist– with a practice spanning Painting, Installation, Sound, Drawing, etc– any medium you can think of, that guy is probably using.
Before our meeting today, my impression of Olkamll was formed solely from the internet.
As Merrick puts it, “He posts his face more than his work.” Heavy styling, almost editorial-like portraits, cosplay, snaps of nightlife and beach retreats all exist within the same plane as his practice. Where Nick’s life is rendered with striking clarity, Olkamll seems to have no inclination to confine his work within the constraints of language.
We finally arrived at his space. Hidden behind a brilliantly placed storage unit, his desk was strewn with a healthy amount of “artist clutter”-- buckets, empty bottles of solvent, a camera, random papers, some chocolate milk and nail polish. The walls, however, were more barren than I expected– save for two sticks of bamboo and a singular painting of a body of water.
Blue in tone, the rolling waves sparkle. The image itself seemed to me like a marriage between stillness and movement.
As a painter, I was naturally drawn to Olkamll’s paintings. His older work, as observed from his website, hold a certain fluidity– an interplay of bold colour and gesture that soaks completely into the grain of the canvas.
These newer paintings shown in person are decidedly more figurative than the ones I saw online.
Olkamll quickly swapped the blue painting out for three others, also of bodies of water.
Nick has been surrounded by water all his life. Having grown up next to the sea, and now completing his degree on the bank of the river Thames，the presence of water became an indisputable constant. Nick sees water as an embodiment of childhood nostalgia, a place of familiarity in which he can find solace. Conceptually, water is in a state of constant movement. He relates this to his present situation now, being away from home, “oceans apart” from the beach he grew up next to. These geographically unplaceable bodies of water are recorded as close-ups– the waves in the painting shimmer, yet stretch endlessly beyond the canvas, like a memory just out of reach. Water then becomes a vessel of memory– a portal of sorts that transports him down memory lane. Here, the fluidity of water mirrors Nick’s own approach: untethered, exploratory, unbound by a single medium or narrative.
Olkamll insists that different bodies of water, even in close scrutiny, are completely discernable from one another. “There’s just a different look and feel”.
But what he said next about his practice came as a surprise. He states with conviction: “I never display my paintings.”
He then expanded: “I am interested in displaying a curated experience– something that is not limited to just paintings on a wall. I want to create… an environment that is entirely controlled by me, which is why I do installation.”
He shares about his past installation, titled If that’s where I am, then I’m no one and I’m nowhere”. The installation features a long, dark room, LED lights and a sound composition, ending with a painting at the end of the corridor.
“It was at a point of time when I was really thinking about my purpose in this world - what it means to live a finite life in this infinite universe. I believed we lived for something greater than life, that we are always going somewhere. To me, it was a daunting idea that made me feel a sense of emptiness… i wanted the installation to conclude in darkness, in something like a void.”
Indeed, the painting carried a void-like quality—black, dense, low-contrast—almost like an extreme close-up of a pupil. As the artist explained the concept behind the work, a thought drifted through my mind: “All things arise and fade; nothing truly begins or ends.”
One detail that caught my attention was the medium: carbon black. A pigment born from incomplete combustion, it carries within it the residue of destruction—ashes, dust, remnants of fire—and yet, in that same residue, hints of rebirth.
Within the realm of installation, he seems to favour metal, as a medium. He spends his daytime entirely in the metal workshop, and once it shuts, he defaults to his studio, where he continues programming his latest piece.
Largely rooted in process-based experimentation, his practice is not tied to medium or technique. He notes that a common misconception people may have about him is that he’s “got everything together”, when in reality, that is often not the case. I can personally relate to his struggle with the “technical learning curve”-- in which the technical skill curve struggles to match with one’s vision or concept– whenever he embarks on a new idea. Seemingly allergic to routine, he says, “whenever I get into an artist’s block, it's usually because I spent too much time in the studio.”
His approach to life reflects in a way in his approach to studio– or non-studio practice. Split between the studio, the metal workshop, and an active social life, Olkamll never runs out of inspiration.
“My ideas for materials often seem… in excess? Rather than lacking inspiration, I have a harder time deciding on what I want to do.”
He then shows us a flip-through of his prized sketchbook, where he plans and stores all of his ideas for his sculptures and installations. His latest concept involves constructing a bamboo structure over four metres long entirely with metal, with a slit down the middle to house LED lights. From his bag, he pulls a small section—the latest development after his daily session at the metal workshop. His excitement is palpable as he shared the initial plans for this ambitious piece.
Watching him move between studio, metal workshop, and screen, it becomes clear that Nick’s practice is less about a single medium than about a state of being—fluid, exploratory, and untethered. His paintings of water, the void-like installation, the intricate line drawings, even the carefully curated snippets of his online persona, all speak to a constant negotiation between presence and absence, memory and the moment. Olkamll, like the water he paints, flows between form and formlessness, between self and work, leaving traces of an artist fully engaged with the world, yet always slightly out of reach—an ongoing conversation between creation and curiosity.
Photo：Merrick， Olkamll
Text：Gigi
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