Richard Mark Rawlins (b.1967), Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, currently lives and works in Hastings, UK. A graduate of the Royal College of Art’s print programme (2019), Rawlins’ research takes a transnational approach to the "pop-cultural" poetics and politics of life in the Caribbean, the contested and resultant histories/realities of colonialism and its transpontine consequence, black identity and diaspora politics.
Rawlins was one of the selected artists for both the inaugural RBSA Drawing Prize (2023) and the Trinity Buoys Wharf Drawing Prize (2023). Rawlins was also one of the commissioned artists for the World Reimagined Project (2022), and Hospital Rooms’ site specific works for the Titian, PICU ward in Goodmayes Hospital (2021) and the new Springfield Hospital in Tooting (2022). Rawlins’ work has featured in We Out Here, Hastings Contemporary, (2023); The Derwent Drawing Prize, 2022; Breaking Bread, Broadway Gallery, Letchworth, (2022); Drawn Out, (2021); Drawing Room, London; the Drawing Biennial 2021, Drawing Room, London; The Human Touch: Making Art, Leaving Traces, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, (2021); Ingram Prize (2020); Wells Art Contemporary (2020); Photofringe (2020); The Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (2020-21); We Are More Than a Moment (2020) Gallery-51, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, USA; Get Up Stand Up Now, Somerset House, London, UK (2019); Transoceanic Visual Exchange (2019), Cache Space, Beijing, China and The Barbados Museum and Historical Society; “OVERPR!NT, AG!TATE, ACT!VATE”, Museum Centre de la Gravure et de l’image imprimée, La Louvière, Belgium (2018); “Most things Happen When I Am Asleep”, ARTSPACE NZ, Auckland, New Zealand (2018); “Digital”, National Gallery, Jamaica (2015) and the “Jamaica Biennial” (2014). He is a past artist resident of the Vermont Studio Center, USA (2012).
Rawlins' work has been acquired by the Wedge Curatorial Collection, Toronto; AMBA Collection, London, the Soho House Art Collection (London and Brighton), the Guest House Hotels collection as well as the Art Collection of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, Port of Spain.