Zoe Wilkinson

Zoë Wilkinson (b. 1999) is a British-Caribbean artist. Born and raised in the UK, Wilkinson’s practice endeavours to create an imagined homeland between Guyana and Britain. Using family photographs, autofiction and tropical greenhouses, she makes her world tangible through charcoal and paint.



Drawing from her academic background in philosophy, Wilkinson uses Caribbean folklore to reinterpret the gothic beyond the western canon. These postcolonial approaches are made apparent through the use of non-traditional materials which recall legacies of indentured labour such as sugarcane fabric and charcoal, handmade from driftwood.



Wilkinson uses writing to build her imagined world which is an important part of her multidisciplinary practice. She is currently working on her debut novel which weaves philosophy and the Caribbean Gothic into a coming of age story. Wilkinson has twice been awarded a Break Through Writers of Colour scholarship from Curtis Brown Creative to aid in the writing of her novel.



Wilkinson has just completed her MA in Painting from The Royal College of Art for which she was grateful to benefit from the Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship. In 2025 she won a Hesketh Hubbard Bursary for life drawing and was short...

MA Painting - Royal College of Art (2024-2025)
Graduate Diploma in Fine Art - Royal College of Art (2023-2024)
BA Philosophy - University of Exeter (2018-2021)

Selected Group Exhibitions
The Autumn Exhibition, The Pilgrim Hotel, 2025-2026
Open Cruel, Ruby Cruel Gallery, 2025
Donde Comenzamos, The Bomb Factory Holborn, 2025
Royal College of Art, - MA Painting Graduate Show, Battersea, 2025
The Contemporary Figure, XYZ Gallery London, 2025
Ancestral Utopias, Hanger Space, Royal College of Art, 2025.
Growing Narratives, Upper Glubenkian Gallery, Kensington, 2025.
Art Cubed, Marks and Tilt Gallery, St Albans, 2023
Contemporary Printmaking Prize 2023, Fen Ditton Gallery, Cambridge, 2023
Art Revolving, Collective Gallery, St Albans, 2022

Awards and Prizes
Appointed an Honorary Fellow at The University of Guyana 2025-2028
Awarded an Arts Council Grant (Developing Your Creative Practice) 2025
Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship 2024-25 (full fees and funding for RCA MA Painting)
Hesketh Hubbard Life Drawing Society Bursary Recipient 2025
Curtis Brown Creative Breakthrough Writes of Colour Scholarship 2025
Shortlisted for Jaguar x RCA Prize 2025.
Longlisted for the Jackson’s Art Prize 2023.
Shortlisted for Fen Ditton Print Making Prize 2023.