Caro Williams is a London-based installation and mixed media artist who works with symbols, sound, language and place with much of her work referencing poetry and the natural world.
Caro Williams is a London-based installation and mixed media artist who works with symbols, sound, language and place with much of her work referencing poetry and the natural world.
Caro Williams’ work is actually quite hard to describe in a nutshell but that doesn’t detract from its accessibility and magic. Indeed its refusal to be pinned down goes to its very heart.
Caro recently wrote that she is ‘searching for the moment in which intelligibility fades into ambiguity and mystery.’ She often translates or ‘processes’ things – sounds, words, film clips, lines from poems, ideas – into another materiality through erasure, covering, digital manipulation or reconstitution via another substance. There is a poetic oddness to these processes. Sounds are silenced as they get transformed into materials (for example, sound waveforms in glinting metal, or silence is made manifest through the lushness of velvet) and these in turn become apprehended by another sense – sight – as well as a visceral appreciation of the material used.
The process of translation leaves a kind of poem in the viewer’s mind. We are suspended in a dreamlike space where meaning is ambiguous: we see and hear something that is familiar yet at the same time it is out of reach. Perhaps this is why, despite the beauty and pleasure of the work, there is something melancholic about it too.
-Text by Deborah Burnstone
Caro Williams graduated from AUT Auckland, where she received a postgraduate research scholarship and gained an MA focusing on sculpture with First Class Honours. Caro exhibits widely and has received a number of commissions and awards for her work, including the Wallace Trust Postgraduate Artist Award, the 2013 Headland Sculpture on the Gulf Gen-i Selectors Award, she has been a finalist in both the 2014 Wallace Arts Awards and Premio Celeste 2015, and is a 2016 recipient of Creative New Zealand World War 1 Centenary (WW100) Co-commissioning Fund. Recent projects include Cicatrix 2016-2018, an international artist collaboration. co-curating and exhibiting in Contemporary Art + Ritual an artist-led exhibition at the Crypt Gallery London. Her work is held in public and private collections including the Wallace Arts Trust, New Zealand, and Luciano Benetton Imago Mundi Collection, Italy. Caro is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and Arts Territory Exchange.
https://www.instagram.com/carowilliamsartist/
ART QUALIFICATIONS
2008 MA Sculpture (1st Class Hon's), AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand
2005 BVA Sculpture, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand
1996 Fine Art Foundation, Camberwell College of Arts, London, England
EXHIBITIONS / PROJECTS
2022 Terra Exhibition, Espacio Gallery, London
2022 Wells Art Contemporary, Wells Cathedral, Wells
2022 Royal Society of Sculptors Summer Exhibition, Cromwell Place, London
2022 Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition, Edinburgh
2021 Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery – Museum at Large Public Art Commission, Exeter
2021 Unboxing – A Travelling exhibition, Arts Territory Exchange, Moving across continents via a network of curators, artists, and archivists – Current
2021 Big Small Summer Exhibition, Small House Gallery, London
2021 A Stitch in Time, Arts Territory Exchange, Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts, Chongqing, China
2020 Summer Exhibition, Royal Society of Sculptors, London
2020 Sound Library, Arts Terrirtoy Exchange and Muck (Must Use Critical Knowledge)
2020 Automated, Fringe Arts Bath, Bath Spa
2020 In the Silent Air selected for inclusion in Fabrizio Paterlini – Piano Microstories – The Eighth Note Publication
2019 /2020, 4th Today’s Documents: A Stitch in Time, Arts Territory Exchange, Today Art Museum, Beijing
2019 Put this in Your Window and Think of Me – Arts Territory Exchange, Dept of Land Economy Cambridge University and Cambridge Artworks Gallery
2019 Contemporary Art + Ritual, Crypt Gallery, London (co-curator + exhibiting artist)
2018 CICATRIX IMPRIME, Atelier Circulaire Gallery, Montreal, Canada
2018 CICATRIX, Swindon Museum & Art Gallery, Swindon
2018 Cicatrix: Call and Response, Town Hall Arts, Market Street, Trowbridge, UK
2017 Shifting Ground off-site, London as a solo component of Shifting Ground, Silo 6, Auckland
2017 Call and Response, Nathan Homestead, Auckland, NZ
2017 Strange Joy Installation, White Night Auckland, Auckland Arts Festival, NZ
2017 Call and Response, The Spring Arts & Heritage Centre, Havant, UK
2016 DUST Collective, [email protected]'ROAD, Auckland Artweek, Auckland
2016 Imago Mundi, Trieste, Italy
2016 Call and Response, Salisbury International Arts Festival, Salisbury, UK
2015 Celeste 7th International Contemporary Art Prize, Finalist Exhibition, ex-BAZZI, Milan, Italy
2015 Brick Bay Sculpture Trail, Snells Beach, Warkworth
2015 23rd Wallace Art Awards, Pataka Museum, Wellington and Wallace Gallery, Morrinsville
2014 NZ Sculpture OnShore, Tenth Biennial Exhibition, Auckland
2014 23rd Annual Wallace Art Awards, Pah Homestead, Auckland
2014 DUST Art Collective Pop-up, Circle Gallery, Auckland
2013 The Light Fantastic, Waiheke Art Gallery, Waiheke
2013 Black Asterisk Light Show, Black Asterisk Gallery, Auckland
2013 DUST 5.1, Wallace Gallery, Morrinsville
2013 Code and Reverie, Black Asterisk Gallery, Auckland
2013 Headland Sculpture on the Gulf, Waiheke Island, Auckland
AWARDS & FUNDING
2018 Funding and Support received from New Zealand Embassy, London
2017 Funding in kind and Support received from Manurewa Local Board, Auckland Council
2016 Funding and Support received from Creative New Zealand –WW100 Co-commissioning Fund
2015 Finalist (2nd place in category), Celeste 7th International Contemporary Art Prize
2015 Awarded – Distinguished Artist Award, ArtAscent, Art & Literature Journal, June 2015
2014 Finalist, 23rd Annual Wallace Art Awards
2013 Awarded the Gen-i Selector’s Award, Headland Sculpture On The Gulf, Waiheke
2008 Awarded the Wallace Arts Trust Award for Most Promising Visual Arts Postgraduate
2007 Awarded a Postgraduate Research Scholarship (Visual Arts), AUT University
PROJECTS
2019 Contemporary Art + Ritual, Crypt Gallery, London, May 2019
Co-curator and exhibiting artist – https://artandritual.wixsite.com/mysite
2016-2018 Cicatrix International Cultural Exchange, an international artist collaborative project:
http://cicatrixuk.wixsite.com/cicatrix
RESIDENCY
2016 Cicatrix Residency, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, UK
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS
2014 Exploring the relationship between language, sound and form, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland
2013 Research in and through practice, AUT University, Auckland
2007 The Dynamic Implications of Stasis, AUT University, Auckland
COLLECTIONS
The Wallace Arts Trust, New Zealand
Luciano Benetton World Art Collection, Italy
Private collections New Zealand and UK
Additional details: www.carowilliams.com
