Mikaela Castledine

Mikaela Castledine is an award-winning artist and published writer, with a degree in Applied Science and an MA in Writing and Literature.

She has been a professional artist for 30 years, working mostly in collage and sculpture and is represented in many collections.

She has won numerous awards including the notable Sculpture by the Sea Scholarship, Cottesloe 2013; Sculpture Inside Award, Cottesloe 2016 and joint People’s Choice award in 2019. In 2018 she won the prestigious Mandorla Art Prize and People’s Choice Award.

Her creative impulse is to make things out of anything that comes to hand; paper, thread, wire, wood or words and her work encompasses interests in philosophy, animal (including human) behaviour, architecture and nourishes a deep need for story.

FEATURED WORK

2022

Much of Castledine’s practice centres around interactions between humans and animals, the curious, contradictory and sometimes cruel way we think about, feel for and treat other animal species.

Loaded is an
examination of the selective way we apply charisma to certain animals and not to others, and to some animals at certain times and in certain conditions.

Photographs of outdated practices such as the loading of cattle onto ships via cranes, with ropes tied around their horns
make us recoil and yet we can ignore other practices which may be called inhumane by future generations.