BIOGRAPHY
Professor Paul Coldwell is a practicing artist and researcher. His art practice includes prints, book works, sculptures, and installations. He has exhibited widely, and his work is included in numerous public collections, including Tate, Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), the British Museum, the Arts Council of England, the Musee d’art et d’histoire, Geneva and MoMA (New York). He has been selected for numerous International Print Exhibitions including, the Ljubljana Print Biennial, the International Print Triennial Krakow, and the Northern Print Biennial. In 2013 the Universities of Canterbury and Greenwich presented a survey exhibition of his prints over two decades, A Layered Practice Graphic Work 1993-2012 and in the same year, he had a solo exhibition Re-Imagining Scott at the Scott Polar Research Institute , Cambridge which included prints, postcards, sculptures, and glassworks. in 2015 a solo exhibition, Material Things at Gallery II, the University of Bradford focused on the relationship between his sculptures and prints over a period of fifteen years.
In 2016 he staged a solo exhibition at Gallery 25, Perth, Australia and 2016-17 he presented new work at both the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna, (Setting Memory) and the Freud Museum, London, (Temporarily Accessioned) which was exhibited again at the Beaney House of Art & Knowledge, Canterbury in 2021. This work was the subject of a film by Susan Steinberg entitled The Hope (available on Youtube).
In 2018 he was included in ReConciliations at the History Museum Sarajevo for which he made newly commissioned pieces shown alongside earlier work which imaged the siege of Sarajevo. His installation A Life Measured: Seven sweaters for Nermin Divović, was acquired for the museum’s permanent collection and was featured again in the exhibition Pazi Snajper in 2021.
In 2018 he was commissioned by the Swiss Graphic Society to produce an edition of prints to be distributed world-wide for their 100th Anniversary.
In 2019, following a period of research supported by AHRC, he exhibited Picturing the Invisible at the Sir John Soane’s Museum and in the same year was invited by the Estorick Collection, London to rehang their Morandi prints & drawings alongside his own work made in lockdown. (A Still Life-Paul Coldwell in Dialogue with Giorgio Morandi)
He has curated a number of exhibitions, including Digital Responses at the V&A, Morandi’s Legacy: Influences on British Art at the Estorick Collection, London, (accompanied by a book published by Philip Wilson) and The Artists Folio at Cartwright Hall, Bradford (2014). He published a major survey of print-making, Printmaking: A Contemporary Perspective (Black Dog Publishers) in 2010 and has been a regular contributor to a number of publications including, Art in Print, Printmaking Today, and Print Quarterly where he has been on the editorial board since 2009. Picturing the Invisible, co-edited with Professor Ruth Morgan, was published by UCL Press in 2022.
In 2011 he was chairman of the selection jury for the Imprint International Graphic Art Triennial in Warsaw, Poland, and one of the jurers for the Polish Print Triennial in 2018. He has been invited to speak at numerous conferences including as keynote
speaker at Impact 7 International Printmaking Conference, Melbourne, Australia in 2011, SNAP3 in Germany in 2015, Art & Reconciliation in Sarajevo and in 2019 he was invited to visit the University of Indiana to present a McKinney Endowed Lecture.
He has conducted a series of public conversations at the University of the Arts London with prominent printmakers including Paula Rego, Christiane Baumgartner, Thomas Kilpper, Jim Dine, Christopher Le Brun, Sean Caulfield, and William Kentridge.
Penguin Michael Joseph are publishing their first book with Paul Coldwell Ink, Paper, Chisel Grain, due out in Spring 2016. This focuses on woodcut and how this earliest form of printmaking has survived and developed into the 21st century. Through a selection of iconic woodcut prints, this book explores how artists have used the woodcut to shape their thinking, visualise their ideas and capture moments in history.
