Michelle Cawthorn is a Dharawal/Sydney-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice invokes personal and collective memory through her distinctive visual language of repetitive mark-making. In her work she examines the way meaning is constructed and expressed via an autoethnographic approach that explores themes related to childhood, identity, time, and place. Though grounded in drawing, her work intersects with collage, painting, sculpture, and installation and she places emphasis on the role of intuition in studio-based practice, resulting in works that meld figuration and abstraction.
Cawthorn trained at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) and later a Master of Fine Arts. In 2021 she completed a PhD titled 'Formative: the influence of memory encoded in late childhood on artistic practice in middle adulthood’ at UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture. Since 2003 she has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia. Recent projects include A Momentary Lapse in Concentration, OLSEN Gallery, Sydney (2023), The Paul Guest Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria (2022), Songbird, Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, NSW (2021), Imagine, curated by Simon Gregg, Gippsland Art Gallery, Victoria (2018), and Four Solos, curated by Carrie Kibbler at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Sydney (2015), amongst others.
Cawthorn has twice been awarded the Hazelhurst Art on Paper, Local Artist Award (2017, 2013) and was a finalist in the Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2017. In 2018 she received a Bundanon Fellowship towards her residency at Bundanon, NSW in 2019. In the same year she was Visiting Artist at the Australian National University, School of Art ad Design.
She is represented commercially by OLSEN Gallery, Sydney.
Image credit: Anna Kučera and Artist Profile