CATHIE PILKINGTON

Cathie Pilkington is an artist whose work engages passionately and critically with the canonical history of figurative sculpture. Crossing the borders of traditional, modern and contemporary idioms, her work combines intensively modelled and painted sculptures within immersive installations comprising a diverse array of props, materials and studio furniture. Her site-responsive installations are balanced ambivalently between chaos and precision and have been described as a kind of art historical fly-tipping.

Pilkington studied at Edinburgh College of Art (1986-91) and The Royal College of Art (1995-97).

She was elected a Royal Academician in 2014 and became the first female professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools 2016-2019.

In 2020 she was elected Keeper of the Royal Academy of Art, London.

Her work is held in the collections of Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester; The Huntarian, Glasgow; Omer Koc Collection and the Roberts Institute of Art.

Selected Exhibitions and Interviews

• The Value of the Paw, V&A Museum of Childhood Bethnal Green 2012

• Life Room: Anatomy of a Doll

  • Royal Academy Schools Life Room 2017

  • Brighton University Galleries, Brighton Festival

• Doll for Petra, Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft 2017

• Working from Home

  • Dorich House Museum 2018

  • Pallant House Gallery 2019

• The Covering: Cathie Pilkington, Pierre Molinier and Morton Bartlett, Karsten Schubert 14 February – 20 March 2020

• The Ancestors, Royal Academy of Art, London 7 September - 19th January 2020

• Estin Thalassa, Karsten Schubert 1 June-9 July 2021

• Weird Horses, Karsten Schubert 21 April – 27 May 2023