Karalyn Shaw

Karalyn Shaw is a conceptual, materials-focused contemporary artist from Brisbane, Australia.

She regularly sits at the nexus of science, engineering, philosophy, society and culture.

Her work is informed by concurrent formal study in Civil Engineering (Water and Marine) and Science (Coastal and Ocean) at the University of Queensland, Australia and previous academic pursuits in international affairs, law, languages and psychology. She is an avid reader, researcher, learner, thinker, experimenter and explorer.

Karalyn’s principal commercial clients have included the Westfield Scentre Group and Orb Hair in Brisbane, Australia together with numerous personal commissions. She has a permanent exhibit at the Queensland Museum featuring a sample of work from a large-scale, community-collaborative, human rights and peace-related installation she orchestrated in conjunction with the United Nations International Peace Day commemoration within St John’s Cathedral in Brisbane in 2014.

Karalyn was runner-up in the University of Queensland’s Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology Faculty’s Art Competition, 2022 with her mixed media work, “The Kiss” and in 2023, was a shortlisted finalist in the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Engineered Quantum System’s (EQUS) Emergence Art Competition for her sculptural work, “Bucky’s Indian Defence” exhibited in Sydney’s M2 Gallery in mid-2023. Further, she completed a 3 week residency at The Crayshack, Killiecrankie on Flinders Is, Tasmania.

Karalyn was named a finalist in the Australian Maritime Art Prize in Melbourne in September 2023, for her large 2D mixed media work, ‘Black Hole’. Subsequently, she was an Artist in Residence at Atelier Austmarka, Finnskogen, Norge. She held an アルバイト・part time job position・at the Tobichi Art Museum, Tatsuno Town, Nagano, Japan (辰野町のトビチ美術館) across the end of 2023 and in early 2024; and also, an Artist in Residency position at Arteles Creative Center, Hämeenkyrö, Finland themed “Silence Awareness Existence” for “artists, scientists and deep minds” in February 2024. Later that year, Karalyn was a finalist in the Australian Engineered Quantum System’s (EQUS) Duality Art Competition for her sculptural work, “Quantum Yin Yang”.

In November 2024, Karalyn undertook a month long residency at Herhúsið in Siglufjörður northern Iceland and subsequently, a two month immersion at Arctic Culture Lab in Ilulissat, Greenland until February 2025. She was an international resident artist in the Way Beyond program at Arteles Creative Centre, Hämeenkyrö, Finland in May 2025 and similarly, at Spitsbergen Kunstnersenter Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway in June, 2025.

Her research and sculptural works at these residencies formed the practice-led methodology central to her exegesis and graduating Master of Visual Arts exhibition at the Queensland College of Art and Design Griffith University in November 2025 linking chess, the global "wicked” problem of climate change, geopolitics and the Arctic region. Karalyn was awarded The Griffith University Academic Excellence Award for her results in this program.