The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Carol Rudyard was born in England in 1922. She left Sheffield in 1947 with her husband, a doctor employed by the British Government, and lived on the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (British Colonies in the Pacific). They arrived in Western Australia in 1950, and lived in Mullewa and Southern Cross, before settling in the Perth suburb of Leederville in 1956.

At this point Rudyard began designing textiles, quickly achieving both commercial and artistic successes. She also painted watercolours, and won the Festival of Perth Poster Prize for an untitled work in 1964. Rudyard enrolled in an Associate Diploma in Art at the West Australian Institute of Technology from 1968-1970. She won the Mundaring Art Prize in 1970, and began teaching at the West Australian Institute of Technology in 1971.

Rudyard travelled to Europe in 1972 and held her first solo exhibition in 1973. After completing a postgraduate diploma in visual art at Curtin University in 1981, Rudyard began to abandon painting for audio visual mediums, particularly video installations. Her ‘Langco’ (1986) is held in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Rudyard was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from Curtin University in 1999, and made a Living Treasure of the State of Western Australia in 2004.