BIOGRAPHY

Alison Pilkington is a painter based in Dublin. Her work taps into the artist’s inner world and personal experiences, to conjure up strange and unsettling landscapes, where all is not entirely at ease. Humour, the absurd and private jokes abound, she draws on references from ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, varying from 17th C classical painting and the stories of James Joyce, to the writings of Stephen King and the humourist Ivor Cutler.

In 2015 she completed a practice led PhD in painting at the National College of Art and Design Dublin. She was awarded a British Institution Award for painting at the Royal Academy Summer Show London in the same year, selected for the Marmite Painting Prize, London (2012 and 2016) and shortlisted for the Kurt Beers 100 Painters of Tomorrow publication (2013).

Recent solo exhibitions include / Build My Own Island, Model Arts & Niland Gallery Sligo (2021), How We Roam, The Dock, Carrick on Shannon (2013), BHA Ashtord Gallery Dublin (2018), and Will We Remember Volcanoes, Westminster Art Library London (2017). She recently had a two person exhibition, Somewhere the Zebra is Dancing, Schonfeld Gallery,Brussels (2022).

She is Co – Editor of The Fold publication with Cora Cummins, and is currently the Course Director of Photography at Marino College of Further Education.