Professor Paul Coldwell

Biography

Professor Paul Coldwell is an artist and researcher whose practice includes prints, book works, sculptures and installations. He has exhibited widely; his work held in numerous public collections, including Tate, Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), British Museum, Arts Council of England, MoMA (New York) and the Musee d’art et d’histoire, Geneva and selected for many international Biennials including Cracow, Ljubljana, Split, Egypt and Warsaw.

Solo exhibitions include A Layered Practice 2013, Studio 3 Gallery, University of Kent, Re-Imagining Scott2014, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, Material Things 2015, Gallery II, The University of Bradford, Temporarily Accessioned 2017 Freud Museum London, Picturing the Invisible-The house from below 2019, The Sir John Soane Museum, London, A Still Life: Paul Coldwell in Conversation with Giorgio Morandi 2021, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art and Natura Morte & other works at the Italian Cultural Institute, London in 2023

He has curated a number of exhibitions, including Digital Responses, V&A, Morandi’s Legacy; Influences on British Art, Estorick Collection, London, and most recently The Artist’s Folio at Cartwright Hall, Bradford (2014). He published Printmaking: A Contemporary Perspective, Black Dog Publishers in 2010 and contributes to a number of publications including, Art in Print, and Print Quarterly where he is on the editorial board. In 2022 he in 2025 wrote the introduction for The Prints of Banksy - Thames & Hudson and has been commissioned by Penguin Michael Joseph to write Ink, Paper, Chisel, Grain. A remarkable history of Woodcuts to be published in 2026.
In In 2011 he chaired the jury for Imprint International Graphic Art Triennial in Warsaw and has been Keynote Speaker at Impact 7 International Printmaking Conference, Melbourne 2011 and SNAP 3, Germany 2015. In 2024 he presented Paula Rego Printmaker at Lakeside Arts, University of Nottingham, was invited guest speaker Guess who’s coming to dinner? At the Royal Academy of Arts, Antwerp and presented Freud’s Coat and other stories at the Freud Museum, London.
In 2015 he was awarded an Arts Council grant to develop new work for exhibitions at the Freud Museums in Vienna and London and in 2019 led an AHRC Network grant, Picturing the Invisible resulting in a series of high profile events and a major publication with UCL Press Picturing the Invisible co-edited with Prof. Ruth Morgan.

Coldwell's research is focused on a practice-based approach and located within fine art. Through printmaking, sculpture, installation and writing, he explores issues around absence and loss, with ideas crossing between media.

A recurring question for Coldwell is how new technologies impact on previous processes, in particular within printmaking; and how digital technologies can inform and rejuvenate older technologies, such as etching and screenprint.

This fits in to his broader commitment to printmaking, both as a practitioner but also through raising awareness of the value and quality of print over and beyond its role as a reproducible media.