Bill Woodrow
In 1980, English sculptor Bill Woodrow first devised his characteristic method of making sculpture, forming a new object or objects from the skin of a found domestic appliance. Woodrow worked in such a way as to leave evident the original identities of the constituent items as well as the mode of transformation. His work is distinguished by its reliance on discarded consumer durables redolent of contemporary urban experience and by a witty and skilful manipulation of this raw material into a kind of three-dimensional drawing. These juxtapositions of images and objects from ordinary life do not constitute didactic statements, but have an elliptical, poetic content. In later work, Woodrow continued greatly to expand his raw material to encompass car doors and bonnets, industrial units and textiles, while also elaborating the symbolic and narrative implications of his constructions, for example, Life on Earth (1984), in which a group of vinyl chairs and a consumer durable are cunningly metamorphosed into an improvised theatre for a “home movie,” where the fish on film seem to watch the human audience with as much curiosity as that of the spectator scrutinising the work of art. In the late 1980s, while retaining the symbolic and narrative …
In 1980, English sculptor Bill Woodrow first devised his characteristic method of making sculpture, forming a new object or objects from the skin of a found domestic appliance. Woodrow worked in such a way as to leave evident the original identities of the constituent items as well as the mode of transformation. His work is distinguished by its reliance on discarded consumer durables redolent of contemporary urban experience and by a witty and skilful manipulation of this raw material into a kind of three-dimensional drawing. These juxtapositions of images and objects from ordinary life do not constitute didactic statements, but have an elliptical, poetic content. In later work, Woodrow continued greatly to expand his raw material to encompass car doors and bonnets, industrial units and textiles, while also elaborating the symbolic and narrative implications of his constructions, for example, Life on Earth (1984), in which a group of vinyl chairs and a consumer durable are cunningly metamorphosed into an improvised theatre for a “home movie,” where the fish on film seem to watch the human audience with as much curiosity as that of the spectator scrutinising the work of art. In the late 1980s, while retaining the symbolic and narrative elements characteristic of his earlier work, he began to work first in welded steel, and then, in cast bronze.
He has had solo shows at institutions such as Lisson Gallery in London, Oxford’s Museum of Modern Art, Boston’s ICA, Kunsthalle Basel, Kunstverein Munich, Seattle Art Museum, Tate Gallery in London, Saatchi Collection in London, Imperial War Museum in London, XXI Bienal de San Paolo, and British Library in London. His work has been included in group shows at Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, XII Biennale in Paris, Bienale di Venezia, Biennale of Sydney, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Hayward Gallery in London, Serpentine Gallery in London, Museum of Art Pittsburgh, Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. and San Francisco’s MoMA, among many other venues. In 1986 he was a finalist in the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery in London. In 2002 he was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts.
Courtesy of Tate
Arts Council of England
British Council
British Library, London
British Museum, London
Imperial War Museum, London
Government Art Collection
Tate Gallery, London
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, Belgium
Musée d‘Art Contemporain, Montréal, Canada
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, France
Musée d‘Art et d‘Histoire, Chambery, France
Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico
Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Netherlands
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Waddington Custot Galleries, London, UK