Oliver was invited to create some puppets for a The Art of the Exceptional exhibition, a collaboration between Fortnum & Mason and Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust in celebration of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee in 2022.

​

Fortnum & Mason (F&M) and the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST) produced an iconic one-off hamper, celebrating the best of British making across the fields of food and craft. 

 

A series of 5 exhibitions, from March to June 2022, introduced and explored the project, celebrating the wealth of talent supported by QEST, for which Oliver was the recipient of the 2021 QEST Stanley Picker Scholarship. The exhibition showcased exceptional makers and focused on materiality, revealing the endless variety of approaches contemporary makers take to often very humble materials. 

​

For the exhibition, Oliver created two brand new marionette puppets, carved from lime wood, depicting the mythological characters of Daedalus and Icarus flying and falling, respectively, in a theatrical hanging.