Paula Wilkins (b. Essex 1967) is a London based Artist working with photography. She received a City and Guilds in Photography at Southend Polytechnic in 1986 and then a Diploma in Visual Arts in 2013 from Putney School of Art.
Wilkins’ practice investigates the ever-expanding visual language created by the proliferation of image transference in the digital age. Through appropriation and the re-photography of imagery from art history, film and popular culture she explores the recurring tropes and themes used to depict and construct gender ideals.
An ongoing exploration of digital technology is core to her practice. Through experiments with re-photography using multiple digital devices including the iPhone, TV screens and cameras, she mimics and exaggerates the processes of image transference. The struggle between the technology and the ability or inability to control the image is both exciting and frustrating and this process becomes evident in the work. The resulting artworks hold a visible tension whereby the image hovers between the digital representation and the original. Soft fields of muted hues are disrupted by digital scars and glitches and veer towards abstraction, yet something of the familiar lingers within them.
Display is an important consideration, and her recent works have evolved into semi-sculptural pieces, combining materials suggested through the images subject, history and situation. Bodily imagery printed on memory foam is pressed through steel; soft sensual imagery appears as if bolted to the wall. These are perhaps more unsettling than earlier works which tended towards gentle ambiguity and are more visually demanding in their juxtaposition of image and material.
