Bill Woodrow
Born – Henley-on-Thames, England 1948
Bill Woodrow’s work is a combination of wit and technical skill. Like Tony Cragg and David Mach, other sculptors who came to prominence in the 1980s. Woodrow’s art is his appropriation of banal objects, domestic appliances and materials and their subsequent metamorphosis. His work possess a sardonic humour in the way that outmoded items, electric fires and washing machines, for example, are magically fashioned into something else, as if metal and wire became origami paper. The combined spirits of Arte Povera and of Pop Art are resurrected to comic effect in Woodrow’s work. However, a more serious interpretation could be implied in the ingenious way that Woodrow makes a moral print. He seems to suggest that the greed with which we cram consumer products into our lives outweighs notions of recycling and the harm we do to the environment. The transformation of materials in Self-Portrait in the Nuclear Age hints at destruction and mutation. The jack-in-the-box is a surprise laced with black humour and a warning that literally balances over our world. Woodrow’s more recent, larger scale works – such as Regardless of History, shown in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2000-2001 – point to more universal themes concerning, for example, wealth and the pursuit of power.
Masterpieces:
- Twin-Tub with Guitar
- Life on Earth
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About bill woodrow
Bill Woodrow: Sculpture 1980-86
Lynne, [text] Cooke
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In Awe of the Pawnbroker: Bill Woodrow (Welsh Edition)
John Roberts
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Bill Woodrow: Sculptures 1981-1988
Julia Kelly
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