Pilkington was born in Manchester, England. She attended the art foundation course at North Cheshire College in Warrington, then went on to study silversmithing at EdinburghCollege of Art from 1986. She graduated with a BA in 1991, with first-class honours, and in the same year was awarded the first John Watson Prize for Art. She also taught in America and India in 1989–1990. She exhibited with the Bruton Gallery in Bath from 1992, and was part of the first Royal West of England Academy Open Sculpture Exhibition in 1993. Pilkington studied at the Royal College of Art in London from 1995, gaining an MA in Sculpture in 1997; she was subsequently awarded the Cheltenham Fine Art Fellowship.
Career
In 1999, Pilkington's sculpture Bill and Bob, depicting two Jack Russell terriers swimming in a pool, was installed in Millennium Square in Bristol. This was Pilkington's first commission for a public space, The two dogs are rendered in painted bronze and set in a pool of vivid blue rubber, flush with the square's paving. Pilkington's "amusing and ambiguously sentimental sculptures" were included in the three-person show Off the Leash at the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield in 2003, the same year that her Homunculus, a miniature painted fibreglass manikin of a boy, was displayed outside the headquarters of The Economist magazine in London. At the time she was based in London as a lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts. In 2012, her solo exhibition entitled The Value of the Paw was held at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, London. Pilkington was elected as a Royal Academician in 2014, and was awarded the Sunny Dupree award for her work ' Referencing the reclining figures of Henry Moore, Pilkington's interest in using shop windows and modes of display, and in using dolls and manikins in her work, is evident here: as she says, "The doll is a perfect object to put lots of ideas into". In 2017, after being appointed Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools, Pilkington created the project , in which she placed ballet-dancer figures, derived from those in the work of Edgar Degas, distorted and apparently in the process of being sculpted, in the Life Room of the Royal Academy Schools. her Surrealist approach to the figure was shared with participants in the project 'Exquisite Corpse' which she invited members of the public to attend classes based on the work.She says of her engagement with the female form: 'I am consciously joining in with the objectification of the female form, but on my own terms, and with glee' For the Brighton Festival in 2017 Pilkington created and engaged with the work of British artist Eric Gill, co-curating the exhibition ' which featured work by Gill and her own work, Doll for Petra, inspired by a doll made by Gill for his daughter, at Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, Sussex. Pilkington's work is held in the collections of the Deste Foundation in Athens, Manchester Art Gallery and the David Roberts Collection in London.
