British artist Dawn Cole is an award-winning printmaker who uses archives to explore themes of recollection, memory and memorial. Her approach is concerned with the very nature of print; repetition, reversal and layering and every idea, technique and material are researched to ensure its significance to the completed works.
Dawn is a collector and the keeper of several archives which act as the catalyst for new work. Her work develops as a result of extensive research and has a strong narrative thread. Since 2007 Dawn has researched and made work in response to the archive of a WW1 Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurse Clarice Spratling which has taken her from Clarice’s home town of Ramsgate to the Lochnagar Crater on the Somme, the subject of Dawn’s latest project ‘From Wasteland to Wasteland’.
Dawn was recently appointed Artist in Residence at Canterbury Cathedral. Her work has been exhibited throughout the UK, France, Portugal, USA, Japan and Ireland and in 2011 she won the V&A Print Prize at the International Print Awards. Her work is held in the V&A Permanent Print Collection and Scarborough Museum Print Collection.