Caroline Gorick (b. 1981)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

Caroline Gorick is a British Artist, born in Manchester 1981 and is based in Greater London. In 2004 she received a BA (Hons) Fine Art and Visual Culture from The University of The West of England, Bristol. She Graduated from the Royal Academy of Art, London in 2008.

Gorick creates large scale paintings portraying light caught in dark indeterminate spaces. The paintings balance tension between banality and otherness; painted surface and illusion. Her recent work depicts objects found in modern shopping centres, casinos and hotels favoured by the artist. These elaborate spaces designed to visually intoxicate, cocoon us in their artifice, while their pristine surfaces distract us from the harsh reality of our own organic life cycle. The promise of an immortal space, remaining forever bright and synthetically shiny, provides the perfect arena for the relentless activity of consumption, escapism and denial. Despite the origins of the work, the paintings themselves take on an organic appearance that punctures the illusion these spaces offer.

Gorick’s paintings reference traditional, modern and contemporary culture including painting, film, literature and architecture. For example, in Petals on a Wet, Black Bough, the technique and intensity of Baroque painting collides with a contemporary filmic quality. Titles are often lines taken from Imagist poems. These titles, clearly describing a scene distinct from the painting, become allegorical, questioning further what the painting depicts.

Her work is in the In Mizuho bank collection and Ronnie Wood’s collection. In 2004 she was Nominated for ‘The Aiden Threlfall Scholarship’and for ‘The Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries. 2006 a painting was voted 1 of 6 favourite pieces in the Summer Exhibition. Awards won include the ‘Edna Wise figuration prize’ in 2007 ,‘The Lady Sharon Walker Trust’ (three year sponsorship), and the ‘Richard Ford Travel award’. In 2008 the ‘Cheneviere Travel award’ and the ‘Steiner painting award 2009’ in 2009.