Current Research - Artist Statement

My research is focused on a practiced-based approach and located within fine art. Through printmaking, sculpture, installation and writing, I explore issues around absence and loss, with ideas crossing between media. A recurring question for me is how the new technologies impact on previous processes, in particular within printmaking and how digital technologies can inform and rejuvenate older technologies such as etching and screenprint. This fits in to my broader commitment to printmaking both as a practitioner but also through raising awareness of the value and quality of print over and beyond its role as a reproducible media. I have written on a number of artists including Ardizzone, Rego, Morandi, Caulfield and Craig-Martin.

I have just concluded a two year AHRC funded project, 'The Personalised Surface within Fine Art Digital Printmaking' which considered a range of approaches that artists have adopted to ensure a haptic relationship with their work when working with and through digital technologies. This is part of my broader research within printmaking and I am now in the process of developing a new project with Susan Johanknecht, which will consider the Folio and Artists Book as sites of inquiry.

I have often used collections as locations for my research and practice. These have included, the V&A, Kettle's Yard and a current project that I am developing with the John Soane Museum. Writing has increasingly played an important role in my research, looking for ways of using a narrative language to explore and articulate ideas. My recent projects and exhibition at The Estorick Collection, Morandi's Legacy; Influences on British Art, and at Kettles Yard, I called while you were out, were both accompanied by substantial narrative essays in which I attempted to show how I gather material and how this relates to my working process.

Selected Outputs and Achievements

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2008-09 I called while you were out, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge.
2008 Graphic Work, An-Dan-Te Gallery, Korea.
2007 Kafka's Doll and Other Works, Eagle Gallery.
2005 Paul Coldwell - Recent Prints, Edinburgh Printmakers.
2002 'Case Studies', London Print Studio; Queens Gallery, New Delhi, India; Gallerie 88, Kolkata, India.

Selected Group Exhibitions
2010 'Tamed', Spanish Barn, Torre Abbey, Torquay. 6 July - 30 August (Coldwell, Hirst, Jansch, Long, Nelson, Neudecker).
2010 'Transformed' Imperial War Museum, including works by Fiona Banner, Ian Hamilton Finlay, 1 May - 25 July.
2010 'Interior Spaces', Eagle Gallery (Bevan, Coldwell, Matthews, Smith).
2010 'Printmaking; A Contemporary Perspective', Black Dog Space, London.
2009 'Upside Down/Inside Out', Kettle's Yard, Cambridge.
2009 'WORD/PLAY', ICA, London.
2009 Northern Print Biennial, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle.
2009 'Points of Contact', Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
2008 'Close to the Surface: Digital Presence', ICA, London.
2007 International Multiple Art Exhibition, Gyeongnam International Art Festival, Korea.
2007 'Territories', Study Centre Poole.
2007 14th Tallinn Print Triennial.
2006 International Print Triennial, Cracow, Poland.
2006 'Prints Now', Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
2006 International Print Triennial, Cracow, Poland.
2005 'Sculpture; Time & Process', Study Gallery Poole.
2005 'New Works; Paul Coldwell - Richard Slee', Camberwell.
2005 Ljubljana Biennial, invited artist, Slovenia.
2003 International Print Triennial, Cracow, Contemporary Art Palace, Cracow; Horst Janssen Museum, Oldenburg.
2003 4th Egyptian International Print Triennale, Cairo, Egypt.

Selected Curatorial Projects
2006 'Moriandi's Legacy: Influences on British Art', Abbott Hall, Cumbria.
2004 'Beyond The Digital Surface', Ewah Gallery, Seoul.
2002-03 'Digital Responses', Victoria & Albert Museum.

Books
2010 'Printmaking: A Contemporary Perspective', Black Dog Publishers.
2009 'Personalised Surface; New Approaches to Digital Printmaking', Publication concluding two year AHRC research project.
2006 'Morandi's Legacy: Influences on British Art', London, Philip Wilson Publishers.
2005 'Paula Rego - Printmaker', London, Marlborough Graphics.
2005 'Finding Spaces between Shadows', London, Camberwell Press.

Selected Published Writings
2008 'Between Digital & Physical', in Journal of the New Media Caucus, vol.4, #02.
2008 Guest editor of Journal of the New Media Caucus, vol.04, #02.
2008 Essay in 'I called when you were out', Kettle's Yard.
2006 'Moriandi's Legacy; Influences on British Art', Philip Wilson.
2005 'Ceramic as Canvas Collaboration with Spode has proved to be a fruitful relationship for Charlotte Hodes', in Ceramic Review, #213.
2003 'Paula Rego's Graphic Technique', in Paula Rego - The Complete Graphic work, London,Thames & Hudson.
2003 'Born with a Silver Spoon', in Digital Responses, CD-ROM, London Victoria & Albert Museum.
2003 'Negotiating the Surface', in Digital Surface within Fine Art Practice (CDRom), Dublin, NCAD, UIAH+LI .

Presentations/Conference Contributions
2010 'The Impassive line', CAT Conference, London.
2010 'Printmaking; A Contemporary Perspective', Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation.
2009 'Towards a consideration of the role of surface within digital fine art printmaking', Impact UWE Bristol.
2009 'Case Studies - Tim Head, Kathy Prendergast, Dan Hays and Paul Coldwell', V&A London.
2008 'The Personalised Surface', CAA conference, Dallas, USA.
2007 'Three Bookworks - Memory and Identity', at Impact International Printmaking Conference, Tallinn.
2007 'The personalised surface within fine art digital printmaking', at Impact International Printmaking Conference, Tallinn.
2004 'Integrating the Computer', at Pixel Raiders 2, Sheffield Hallam University, April.
2004 'The Surface as Meaning', at Beyond the Digital Surface - Conference Proceedings, Seoul, Ewha Womans University.
2003 'Making Historie', at Southern Graphics Council Conference, Boston.
2003 'Preservation and Conservation Issues Related to Digital Printing and Photography', at conference at Institute of Physics, Heriot Watt University Edinburgh.
2003 'The Digital Surface', at Culture 2000 Conference, Tate Britain.
2003 'An exploration of Aesthetics in a Digital Age', at Southern Graphics Council Conference, Boston April, Boston, USA.

Selected Awards
2008 AHRC Practice-led and Applied Grant: 'Absence and Presence.'
2007 Principal Investigator, 2 year AHRC research grant for the project 'Personalised Surface within Fine Art Digital
Print Making'.
2005 AHRB Small award for work relating to potential use of haptic technology for digital engraving (in collaboration with Dr Angie Geary).
2004 AHRB Small Grant: 'Morandi; themes in British Contemporary Art.'

Selected lectures/talks
2008 'Paul Coldwell and Roger Wilson in conversation', Kettle's Yard, Cambridge.
2007 'Paula Rego - Printmaker', Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
2007 'Paul Coldwell - The Role of Printmaking', Original Print Fair, RA , London.
2007 'Multi-Print Symposium', Bradford.
2007 'Kafka's Doll', Eagle Gallery London.
2007 'Morandi's Prints', British Museum.
2006 'Moriandi's Legacy; Influences on British Art', Abbot Hall, Museo Morandi Bologna, Italian Cultural Institute, London.
2006 'Paula Rego - Printmaker', RCA.
2006 'Sites of Memory', inaugral lecture, University of Northampton.
2005 'Paula Rego - Printmaker', Talbot Rice Edinburgh, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.
2005 'The Condition of Print', Impact International Print Conference, Berlin/Poznan.
2005 'Imagined Journey's', Impact 1V, Berlin/Poznan.
2005 'The artist as curator', Institute of Curatorship and Education, Edinburgh College of Art.

Current Research Students

Maria Christoforatou - 'The House and the Home in Contemporary Art: The Inter-relational Connections of Self, Space and Place'
Carolyn Flood - Contemporary Drawing as an Element of Installation Practice
Johanna Love - How have new technologies in digital printing affected our perception of the surface within printmaking and the way in which artists explore the convergence of calligraphic and photographic languages held on this surface?
Deborah True - Transcribing Oral Culture to Inform Contemporary Art Practice
Maryclare Foa - An investigation into drawing when made by an artist in the outside environment as a direct response to that environment. How does this action affect that environment and how does that environment affect the artist?

Completed Research Students

Naren Barfield - Integrated Artworks: Theory and Practice in Relation to Printmaking and Computers, and the Influence of 'Non-Euclidean Geometry' and 'The Fourth Dimension@ on Developments in Twentieth Century Pictorial Space
Debbie Glynn - The Preservation and Conservation of Inkjet and Electrophotgraphic Printed Materials
Peter Lee - The Visualisation and Expression of Virtual 3D Surfaces Explored through Custom Developed Interactive Software, Optically Mixed Coloured Surface Contouring and Fine Art Printmaking
Jong Ha Park - 'Following Nature': an enquiry into late 20th Century Taoist 'Naturalism'
Cian Quayle - The Aesthetics of Distance: Photographic image and found object. An investigation of travel as a pradigm for artists' practice
Barbara Rauch - Natural and Digital Virtual Realities: a practice-based exploration of dreaming and online virtual environments.
Jungu Yoon - An examination of the idea of the Numinous in Contemporary Art Practice.

E-mail address

p.coldwell@camberwell.arts.ac.uk