Naomi Wilkinson was a brilliant and individual talent. I first worked with her in 2007, having always remembered her extraordinary design for Happy Birthday, Mister Deka D for Told By an Idiot at the Traverse in Edinburgh in 1999. In the many shows we worked on together, she had a strong sense of needing to create a striking but deceptively simple space for the play; always wanting to support and enhance the text and its messages. This aesthetic and way of working served her well as she moved more into creating designs for contemporary dance.
Her designs for sets and costumes were often bold and provocative – I loved the work she did with Wayne Jordan at the Abbey in Dublin – and she often forced me to think differently and bravely about how a design could work – whether it was a shallow pool full of floating books for Nasty, Brutish and Short at the Traverse in 2008 or the giant staircase that was the backdrop to her design for Peer Gynt at Dundee and the Barbican for the National Theatre of Scotland.
She was inspired by art, experimental artists, sculpture and photography. She was endlessly curious about theatre and the visual arts. She had a huge knowledge of European theatre-makers and was always off to the Barbican to watch shows or to art or photography galleries. Her studio was a beautiful, minimal, calm white space where we spent many hours hunched over model boxes.
Naomi had a strong sense of who she was and what she wanted to do as a designer. She worked only on what she believed in and on projects to which she thought she could bring something. She was an artist, a collaborator, a wonderful friend, and a witty and modest person.