About — Natalie Wilkin

At home in the forest on Moorung-Moobar Country

Bundjalung Country/ Northern Rivers based Multidisciplinary artist Natalie Wilkin - is a maker of objects, environments, and sensory investigations guided by a deep relationship with Nature. Her work is driven by uncovering the unseen forces that operate beneath the surface of the physical world. From the systems that cause disconnection and harm to the vast landscapes of the dream, spirit and the subconscious. Her life and artistic practice is dedicated to fostering reciprocity with her community and home in the rainforest on Moorang-Moobar Country.

Natalie studied a Bachelor of Design studies at Queensland College of Art majoring in the built environment, recently completed an Alumni year at the Byron School of Art and is undertaking her Master of Arts with a focus on Decolonial Praxis in the Arts. Natalie’s design background in the built environment has informed the multifaceted world-weaving she undergoes within her work.

Natalie has been a part of multiple solo and group exhibitions in America and Australia, spending three years in NY as a collaborator and artist in residence at Mildreds Lane - an art project run by J Morgan Puett and Mark Dion - where her artwork was included in high profile exhibitions at SAIC in Chicago and MoMA in NYC.

2022
Knee Deep - Elemental Outpost on Moorang Moobar CountryKnee Deep is an immersion into the turbulent deconstruction and reformation experienced by the artist while living in Moorang Moobar Country in the Northern Rivers during the 2022 floods. These hallucinogenic dreamscapes from the mountain offer a window into the liminality of that time. When all that seemed solid became liquified, tearing at the seams and opening us to the impossibility of this precipice from which we hang.
2021
Passages - BSA Project Space AnnexeThese small gestures are part of Natalie's broader investigations into themes of transition, decomposition, de-colonialism and belonging. The materials used to create this body of work come from offcuts collected in her Dads shed over the last 20+ years. The pieces are remnants of many family projects. When reassembled, they become potent markers for the passage of time we go through together.
2014
Ex Terra Incognita - The Mildred Complexity, Narrowsburg NYIn Ex Terra Incognita, Natalie Wilkin has inhabited our Project Space, embodying complex explorations through an elemental process of intuitive making. A new environment is present with strong materiality, seeking to provoke deeper and visceral responses.
2023
BAM Art Prize Finalists exhibition
NRCCG Ballina - Presented by Byron Arts Magazine (BAM) in partnership with the Northern Rivers Community Gallery. The BAM Art Prize promotes awareness of the arts in the Northern Rivers by presenting a national art prize within the region. The exhibition showcases finalist artworks shortlisted for the 2023 prize. This non-acquisitive prize is open to all Australian artists and brings together an outstanding collection of contemporary artworks.
2022
Material Thinking - Agnes ContemporaryGroup Show with Cedar Jeffs / Natalie Wilkin / Bell Raine / Julia Stockhausen / Lisa Arronis / Tanja Taljaard / Pru Bleasdale / Josephine Ehlers / Gabrielle O'Neill / Sabine Pick 2021
Loose Ends - BSA Project Space Annexe Sept 2021 - Oct 2021Group Show with Cedar Jeffs / Diane Kelly / Natalie Wilkin / Bell Raine / Julia Stockhausen / Lisa Arronis / Tanja Taljaard / Pru Bleasdale / Josephine Ehlers / Gabrielle O'Neill / Sabine Pick / Casey Arnaud / Sandra McKenny
2020
Young landscape #23 and other earthly thneengs* The Mildred Complexity Narrowsburg, NY With Jorge Colombo / Mark Dion / Hope Ginsburg / Gary Graham / Brooke Grant / Heather Greene / Jeffrey Jenkins / Abby Lutz / J. Morgan Puett / Rebecca Purcell / Allison Smith / Natalie Wilkin / Gina Siepel / Samiha Tasnim / Amy Yoes / Jim Zivic / and others. An Installation of Art-Work-and-Wear at The Mildred Complex(ity) project space. All proceeds help support artists during the age of Coronavirus and to benefit the future of Mildred's Lane! Please support by collecting.2019Science Fictional Thinking - Cocurated with Alex A. Jones and Cameron Klavsen Dec 2019 - A guide to the field Mountaindale NYWith Vincent Castro / Jorge Colombo / Mark Dion / Joy Feasley / Hope Ginsburg / Norberto Gomez / Heather Greene / Jeffrey Jenkins / Alex A. Jones / Cameron Klavsen / Abby Lutz / Kristyna Milde / Marek Milde / J Morgan Puett / Rebecca Purcell / Ryan Rennie / Alexander Rosenberg /Alex Schechter / Matthew Solomon / Paul Swenbeck / VIROSA / Allison Ward / Natalie Wilkin / Amy Yoes. It is the year 2020. You are living in the future, and it is nothing like you imagined. This show asks how science fiction can be a tool for artists to anticipate meaningful notions of the future. Sci-fi is not simply a genre, but a vehicle for expressing collective dreams and fears about our ever-changing world. Nor are the aesthetics of sci-fi limited to the space age, for we do not seem destined for a future of technological salvation. The varied works in this exhibition are therefore grounded in trans-historical thinking. They are imaginative leaps, speculative propositions, compromises, and even fantasies. The curatorial premise of their grouping is this: Imagine a future world...what object sits beside you? If sci-fi is a tool for thought, what does that tool look like?
2019
Factory - A guide to the field Mountaindale NY With Barbara Botting / David Brooks / Jorge Colombo / Barbara de Vries / Mark Dion / Hope Ginsburg / Dennis Gordon / Gary Graham / Brooke Grant / Heather Greene / Amanda Heidel / Aaron Hicklin / Jeffrey Jenkins / Alex Jones / Cameron Klavsen / Abby Lutz / Pam Mayer / Kristyna Milde / Marek Milde / Rebecca Purcell / Garnett Puett / J. Morgan Puett / Joshua Quarles / Gina Siepel / Laura Silverman / Allison Smith / Matthew Solomon / Caroline Wallner / Allison Ward / Paul Ward / Natalie Wilkin / Amy Yoes / Mary Lou Zelazny / Jim Zivic / and others swarming the topicFactory is a show hearkening to earliest sites of production—the household—evolving into what we understand as the industrial revolution; on to the rapid evaporations of a technological 21st-century. Here, artists are factories, as if coming full circle. Creative workers and thinkers tell stories, weave histories, sport reflections, make demonstrations, share collections, manufacture clothing and hold events throughout the spring exhibition
2018
Encampment - A guide to the field- Mountaindale NY. With David Brooks / Jorge Colombo / Barbara de Vries / Mark Dion / Hope Ginsburg / Gary Graham / Brooke Grant / Jeffrey Jenkins / Alex A. Jones / Cameron Klavsen / Leigh Claire La Berge / Abby Lutz / Kristyna & Marek Milde / J. Morgan Puett / Rebecca Purcell / Gina Siepel / Shelley Spector / Allison Smith / Caroline Wallner / Allison Ward / Natalie Wilkin / Caroline Woolard / Amy Yoes //These artists are creating handmade protestations against traditionally predetermined domesticity; they are makers reassembling the terms of conceptual artworks we might actually need for the 21st century. The shared goal is to rethink the ethics of comportment, commons, comfort, environment, reassembling the terms by which we define sites with social, political, and civic possibilities.
HumanUfactorY(ng) Workstyles: The Labor Portraits of Mildred’s Lane as part of Hauser & Wirth Somerset group exhibition The Land That We Live In – The Land That We Left Behind. With Jorge Colombo, Mark Dion, Jeffrey Jenkins, J. Morgan Puett, Rebecca Purcell, Natalie Wilkin and other Fellows in collaboration Group Show. Curator, Adam Sutherland 2012-2016Helen Day Art Center, Stow VT
2016
Intimacy and Materiality: The Labor Portraits of Mildred’s Lane. J. Morgan Puett, Rebecca Purcell, Jeffrey Jenkins & Natalie Wilkin With Fellows of Mildred’s Lane
2015
The Labor Portraits of Mildred’s Lane. Handwerker Gallery, University of Ithaca NY. Morgan Puett, Rebecca Purcell, Jeffrey Jenkins & Natalie Wilkin With Fellows of Mildred’s Lane
2014
Proximity of Consciousness: HumanUfactorY(ng) Workstyles. SAIC Sullivan Galleries. J.Morgan Puett With Fellows of Mildred’s Lane.
2012
Common Senses: Mildred’s Lane; The Living Archive. Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Studio, New York, NY. J. Morgan Puett With Fellows of Mildred’s Lane
+ Dingo Dam, NSW - Artist Residency, 2017
+ Mildreds Lane Ambassador of transhistorical agency, NY- Artist in residence 2012-2014
+ Strike Camp, Moulamein NSW - Artist in Residence 2012
Education
+BA Design Studies from Queensland College of Art - 2002 
+ Diploma of live production (Costume) Tafe NSW - 2018 
+ Byron School of Art Alumni Year - 2022
+ Master of Arts (research) Charles Darwin University 2021- current

+ Collaborations

STRANGE ATTRACTOR - LISMORE 2014

This project was born from a vacant space and a group of women - Shantele Ianna, Stefanie Bassett & Natalie Wilkin - looking to experience communal making and gathering. What emerged was a Pop Up open studio situated in Lismore NSW. Together we explored collective women’s spaces and the expression of community focused making. People were invited in to engage with us and with the process of creative engagement.

MILDREDS LANE - USA 2012 - Present

Mildred's Lane is a 94+-acre project site in the Pennsylvania woods on the Upper Delaware River. It is an ongoing collaboration with Mark Dion and J. Morgan Puett with their son Grey Rabbit Puett. A landscape built– by and with– friends and colleagues applying new ways of thinking-doing-making. Artists from around the world convene at Mildred's Lane seasonally, coevolving pedagogical strategies around contemporary topics that concern us. Collectively, we are practicing social engagement in every aspect of life centered around domesticity. More info here.