Cathie Pilkington

Biography

Cathie Pilkington is an artist whose work engages passionately and critically with the canonical history of figurative sculpture.

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 (1985–91) and the Royal College of Art (1995–97). In 2014 she was elected a Royal Academician and was awarded the Sunny Dupree Family Award for her work Reclining Doll. In 2016 she became Professor of Sculpture and in 2020 she was elected Keeper at the Royal Academy Schools.

Selected solo exhibitions include: The Value of the Paw, V&A Museum of Childhood, 2012; Life Room: Anatomy of a Doll, Royal Academy Schools Life Room, 2017; The Life Rooms, Brighton Festival 2017 Doll for Petra, Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, 2017; Dorich House Museum studio residency 2018; Working from Home, Pallant House Gallery, 2018–19 and Estin Thalassa, Karsten Schubert London, 2021.

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

Works