OLIVIA J. BENNETT


I’m an arts writer, researcher and critic based in Australia.

My work examines how digital culture, new media art, film and sound shape contemporary experience through futurology, incongruity and absurdity. I track how aesthetic movements absorb, resist or mutate alongside technological and economic shifts, often through fragmentation, multiplicity and nonlinear forms that mirror media saturation’s effect on perception and meaning.

Beyond writing, I’ve worked across programming, digital production and major cultural projects in Australia’s film and music industries. In 2019 I participated in the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Critics Campus and in 2020 I was part of Gertrude Contemporary’s Emerging Writers Program.

I also work as a freelance copywriter, content writer and strategist. With over five years of freelancing, three years in agency environments and two years navigating Melbourne’s strictest COVID-19 lockdowns, I’ve built a sharp adaptability—crafting strategy and storytelling across diverse industries. If you’d like to see my portfolio, shoot me an email.

I hold a BA in Art History and Curating from Monash University, majoring in Film Studies. My first-class Honours thesis at Melbourne University examined how the films of Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab function as object-oriented cinema, aligning with Timothy Morton’s concept of hyperobjects. Through this lens I explored how their films destabilise human-centred narratives, attune audiences to the nonhuman and engage with the inescapable entanglements of contemporary existence.


Open to new projects, commissions and creative collaborations—if you’re working on something interesting, let’s talk!



SEASHELL ANGEL 
LUCKY CHARM

Armlock




Melbourne duo Armlock have returned with new LP Seashell Angel Lucky Charm. The album expands on the intricate world built on their last record Trust (2021), with chord-forward melodies, steady beats, angelic harmonies, and intricate noise elements infused with whimsical vocal snippets. Like Trust,  Seashell Angel Lucky Charm radiates a bittersweet charm, but perhaps a bit more bitter this time, with Simon Lam’s lead vocals front and centre—muted, reserved, yet masterful. His tone is soothing, like scratching a soft, satisfying itch. The introspective, indie-rock sensibility of Something For Kate’s Echolalia is present in the lyrics that navigate the battle for space in one’s mind, a tug-of-war between fears and desires. Whether it's the feeling of being stuck in an open door in ‘Guardian,’  turning a step into a pirouette to ‘Godsend’s’ synthy piano, locking elbows in ‘Fear, or the imagery of being ankle-deep in ‘Ice Cold’, this album delicately dances between idolatry and iconoclasm. It’s an album about loving purposefully yet unrequitedly, and an exercise in seeing devotion as a pattern of release and capture.