Out for air

Barbariga / Fort Forno / 23 / 9 / 2022 / Talk

Ori­gin­ally from Cum­bria, North West Eng­land, Olly Todd’s devour­ing pas­sion for skate­board­ing promptly took him first around the coun­try with some pro­longed stays and peri­ods in Liv­er­pool or Lon­don, and then around the rest of the world; through­out a style that’s equally firmly rooted in the rugged, impro­visa­tion­al nature of his home envir­on­ment and in dreams of San Francisco’s City Lights, Olly turned out to be one of those key act­ors in rep­res­ent­ing the European skate­board­ing scene and show­cas­ing its dif­fer­ent intric­a­cies and resource­ful­ness to the rest of the world — via no less than three dec­ades of media expos­ure, shoot­ing with pho­to­graph­ers such as Wig Wor­land, Leo Sharp and Ben­jamin Deber­dt, film­ing parts for what would turn out to become his­tor­ic­al full-length videos such as Por­traits then Stat­ic III and jug­gling with the pros and cons of rid­ing for both nation­al and inter­na­tion­al brands, from Land­scape Skate­boards to Ste­reo to Palace — in addi­tion to full-time jobs and fam­ily life.

In addi­tion to all that, Olly also always cul­tiv­ated — but not neces­sar­ily pro­moted — a cer­tain interest in poetry and writ­ing, which already phys­ic­ally mani­fes­ted once in 2018 under the release of Odeum spot­lights, pamph­let num­ber twelve in a series pub­lished by Rough Trade Books. This year at Vladi­mir, it is his new book and first exclus­ive col­lec­tion of works: Out for air — just off the presses and pub­lished by Penned In The Mar­gins — that is our par­tic­u­lar sub­ject of focus. So, make sure to come fetch that oxygen!