Sculpting Lives: Cathie Pilkington

'The thing about my work is that there is a tension between a passionate love and engagement with the traditions of the past and a complete impatience with their irrelevance and it’s trying to hold those things in tension and trying to engage people in the complexities of that.' Cathie Pilkington, R.A.

Cathie Pilkington creates surreal, uncanny and ambivalent forms which are designed to unsettle and provoke. She employs a deliberate lack of hierarchy in her materials, using textiles and found objects alongside more traditional sculptural practices. Her work is often presented as an immersive installation, bringing themes of the domestic and everyday life into the language of sculpture.

During our interviews with Cathie Pilkington in the Royal Academy, her studio and a sculpture foundry, we discuss the barriers to women pursuing careers as sculptors, how sculpture can remain relevant and how an artist can make figurative sculpture that speaks to contemporary audiences. We met her at a pivotal point in her career, taking increasing control and asking questions about the future of sculpture. Pilkington (who was the first female Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools) is Keeper at the Royal Academy and uses her role to ask questions about the history of sculpture and women at an institutional level.

Contributors:

• Cathie Pilkington, R.A.
• Simon Martin, Director, Pallant House Gallery
• Chloe Hughes, Foundry Manager, A.B. Foundry
• Anna McNay, writer and curator

Image: Portrait of Cathie Pilkington in the RA Keeper’s Studio, Digital image courtesy of Hayley Benoit