In Carnivorous Lunar Activities, Olivia Sterling presents a night-time scene of excess: ten impatient hands grab at a central chocolate cake, seemingly the last of three. At first glance saccharine, this painting is a sharp and humorous critique of privilege and self-entitlement that questions and exposes the ways in which race is seen and perceived.

 

In this messy grab for food, two central hands are smeared with chocolate cake – appearing as brown skin – with other hands fighting to get in on the action. Sterling likens the buffet or all-inclusive holiday with entitlement, commenting that “it parallels how dominant cultures borrow and continue to use parts of marginalised one's for 'fun' or to look 'cool.” Here, sunburnt, pink skin offers the promise of being tanned - brown - “dangling over us how ridiculous visual-based discriminations are.”

 

Inspired by the painting Panto Dame by Beryl Cook, a scene of pantomime-goers laughing at a stage performer exposing her undergarments, this work is also an extension of Sterling’s monumental painting All Inclusive 1 and 2 (2021) which was the climax of her acclaimed solo exhibition at Goldsmiths CCA in 2021.

 

Born in Peterborough in 1996 and graduating from the RCA in 2020, Sterling has carved out a distinctive niche in using paint to address questions of blackness and whiteness in twenty-first century Britain. Her work uses caricature with a nostalgic twist to counter established notions of taste and social nicety and reveal a racialised way of seeing.  Her work has been included in exhibitions at Goldsmiths CCA, Sadie Coles, The Perimeter, Saatchi Gallery, and White Cube, among others.