ABOUT
Olivia Azzopardi, known as Olly Inks, is a Cairns-based tattoo artist and master ceramicist with over thirteen years of experience teaching ceramics. After completing her Diploma of Visual Arts at TAFE Queensland, Olivia developed her expertise in drawing, printmaking, ceramics, and most recently, tattooing.
Her artistic career has included running a youth Artist-Run Initiative (ARI), serving as an artist-in-residence, and leading workshops on printmaking and wheel-throwing in Cairns. a, Olivia has dedicated over ten years to teaching the craft, sharing her knowledge and passion with students of all levels. She has also been deeply involved in organizing student exhibitions and community events, further enriching the local arts scene.
Currently, Olivia works as a tattoo artist and ceramicist. Her practice draws on the flowing, ornamental lines of Art Nouveau and infuses them with the psychedelia and surrealism of Australia’s strange landscapes, wildlife, and cultural oddities. In her work, refined European elegance meets the unpredictable textures and colours of the tropics, creating a distinctive visual language that is both beautiful and unsettling. On skin and in clay alike, she reimagines native flora, fauna, and symbols through a lens of soft psychedelia, transforming familiar forms into something dreamlike and uncanny. This synthesis of old-world style and new-world strangeness has become a defining feature of her artistic identity.
CV
Education
2019 Certificate IV Teacher, Training and Assessment | TAFE Far North Queensland
2018 Diploma of Visual Arts | TAFE Far North Queensland
2014 Certificate III in Visual Arts | TAFE Far North Queensland
2013 Certificate III in General Media | TAFE Far North Queensland
Certificate IV in Interactive Digital Media | TAFE Far North Queensland
Solo Exhibitions
2022 Bite Me | Crystalbrooke Bailey Hotel, Cairns
2020 Function Paralysis | Northsite Contemporary Arts, Cairns
2016 Systematic Marches | Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns
2014 Memory Bird | Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns
Selected Group Exhibition
2024 What Life Sounds Like | Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns
2024 Maybe… In flux | Crystalbrook Bailey Hotel, Cairns
2023 Terra Tropica | Crystalbrook Bailey Hotel, Cairns
2018 Destination North | Cairns Art Gallery, Cairns
Gatton St Collective | Gallery Y TAFE FNQ, Cairns
NEO Emerging Arts | Northsite Contemporary Arts, Cairns
2017 Torrid Zones | Northsite Contemporary Arts, Cairns
2015 Stranger Things | The Union, Fitzroy VIC
Curated Exhibitions
2025 Switch On - Ceramics Group Show | Baileys Crystalbrooke, Cairns
2024 Flame - International Womens Day | Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns
2019 Flame - International Womens Day | Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns
2018 Flame - International Womens Day | Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns
2017 Receive and Respond | Crate 59 Gallery, Cairns
Publications
2019 The Journal of Australian Ceramics, Vol #58.2, July 2019 Pg.79 ‘TAFE… Cairns’
Residencies and Artist Run Initiatives
2018 Block Y Arts Studio | Residency | TAFE Far North Queensland
2017 - 16 Lifers | Artist Run Initiative | Sing Sing Espresso, Cairns