Alison Wilding

Alison Mary Wilding OBE, RA (born 7 July 1948) is an English artist noted for her multimedia abstract sculptures.

Wilding's work has been displayed in galleries internationally.

Wilding was born in Blackburn, Lancashire.

Between 1966 and 1967 she studied at the Nottingham College of Art, then at the Ravensbourne College of Art and Design in Chislehurst from 1967 to 1970 and, from 1970 to 1973, the Royal College of Art in London.

Her artistic career gained momentum in the 1980s when she was part of a group of sculptors including Anthony Gormley and Richard Deacon.

Wilding's first solo exhibition was displayed at the Serpentine Gallery in 1985.

These are often used in unusual combinations: Stormy Weather (1987), for example, is made from pigment, beeswax and oil rubbed into galvanised steel.

Of her eclectic media, Wilding has said "I like stuff and not particular materials."

Wilding's work typically includes two opposing materials purposed with representing positive and negative forces, creating a balance within the art.

She maintains that she is conscious of waste and does not like to produce work that will not be displayed.

Wilding self-archives her work, personally giving them unique numbers and descriptions that are logged in small black notebooks.

The notebooks also contain key details of her work, such as early designs and logs of her making progress.

She has expressed that she would like the books to be destroyed rather than leave them to an institution despite requests from organisations such as the Henry Moore Institute.

In addition to sculpture, Wilding has also produced a variety of artworks on paper.

On drawings, she says: 'The thing I like about drawings is that they can float.

You don’t think about gravity.

They do something really different.

That is the freedom and pleasure of drawing for me.

You are not weighed down by the material world in the same way.

So, maybe, they are more imaginative.'

Wilding's approach to her work is often active and arbitrary, basing her decisions on her current time and place.

She also takes a strictly non-political approach to her work, claiming; 'I don’t think art is going to change anyone’s life, not in the way film can do'.

She was subsequently exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1987.

She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1988 (and later in 1992) and received a Henry Moore Fellowship for the British School at Rome in 1988.

In 1991, a major retrospective of Wilding's work, Alison Wilding: Immersion – Sculpture from Ten Years, was held at Tate Liverpool.

In 1999 she was made a Royal Academician.

Her only large-scale public artwork "Ambit" was installed in the River Wear at Sunderland in 1999, taking the form of a necklace of stainless-steel tubes floating in the river, and lit up from underwater at night.

It was subsequently exhibited in the Manchester Ship Canal.

Wilding won a Paul Hamlyn award in 2008.

In the same year she won the Charles Wollaston Award presented by the Royal Academy for the most distinguished work in their summer exhibition.

It was scrapped in 2014.

Since 2018 she has been the Eranda Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy Schools.

She lives and works in London, and has been represented by Karsten Schubert for over 30 years.

Wilding's interest in sculpture was established during her time at the Nottingham College of Art.

Her early influences include Constantin Brâncusi and ideas of simple construction.

She has used traditional materials, often found as reused, such as wood, stone and bronze, alongside others like steel, wax, silk, and rubber.

Wilding was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 New Year Honours, for services to art.