Bio

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Caroline Wilkins is a printmaker and artist who graduated from the Plymouth College of Art Masters programme with a Distinction (2019). She also has a degree in Film, Video and Photographic Arts from the Polytechnic of Central London (1989).

For many years Caroline taught Art to pupils excluded from school and this experience permeates much of her work. Class, power, and inequality are themes that recur across projects and installations.

Caroline completed the Cultivator graduate start-up programme in 2021 and is currently working on a new body of work as guest artist in a graveyard, she is exploring the relationship between print, repetition and site.
She lives and works in Cornwall.

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Statement

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Caroline Wilkins is a printmaker and artist based in Redruth, Cornwall where she works from her print studio.

 

An earlier career working at the margins of art education, with students excluded from school, has defined her work with a distinct politic, one that critically questions our modern condition and contemporary society. Her work has been described as ‘gently subversive’ by the artist Henrietta Paine.

Rather that generate a sense of unease Caroline uses humour to question our collective systems and values.
Through active dialogue with people in her local community she has gently blended social engagement with playful research and experimentation.

Drawn to the history of print as an act of resistance and democracy Caroline employs hand-cut, low-tech, non-digital print techniques which allows a portable, easily reproduced way of disseminating information. The resulting paradox of repetition and visibly distinct uniqueness in each print is a way she continually questions the value and validity of art.

 

Her practice with drawing, letterpress, screen-printing and lino cutting have intersected with site-specificity, performance, and participation. These emerge as large-scale interdisciplinary installations that comment on the physical, social, and cultural conditions of place.

Caroline devised and delivered workshops For Plymouth College of Art at FutureLab Shanghai (2019). She produced a collective exploration of the shared importance in the symbolism of ‘home’ through the making of small houses.

Caroline is currently working in collaboration with Tony Minnion, as Redruth Press, delivering participatory screen printing projects in the community.