Neue Kunst in Europa Juni/Juli/August 1984 [antikvár]

May 84 Bill Woodrow, a talk Bill Woodrow, bom 1948, is one of Britain's leading sculptors, whose work was exhibited all over the world during the last three years. One-man shows included: Lisson (London), Eric Fabre (Paris), Witten-brink (Regensburg), Museum of Modern Art (Oxford), t'Venster (RoMerdam), Ray Hughes (Brisbane, Australia), Toselli (Milan), Locus Solus (Cenova), Art Project (Amsterdam), Barbara Gladstone (New York). Mercer Union (Toronto). In Great Britain he is represented by the Lisson Gallery, London. In June 1984 there will be an exhibition at Paul Maenz in Cologne. Although Woodrow has become an artist of international repute and is well established at home (>so they say is his laconic remark to this), he continues to work and live in the surrounding which provided him with the material for his art: in Brixton, notorious for riots and cherished by the ones who live there, a district in South London with one of the largest West Indian populations in Britain. My work is a direct response to the environment, and in this sense the environment stands for a multi-racial, poor district of any metropolis, and is therefore a representative part of Western society. Woodrow does not believe he would have made other work if he had lived in the country, as discarded household appliances or car doors are ubiquitous in our d^s. But it is tne city, of course, which epitomizes the state of"our culture through the accumulation of signs, One of those signs is waste, thrown on the streets by people who cannot afford to have it collected. A Woodrow sculpture therefore is a piece of waste, -hanging from a wall or standing on the floor - with incongruous objects connected to it: a lizard crawling out of a camera, a telephone hanging out of a car door, a guitar out of a twin-tub or an African mask made out of an old chair and a washing machine. Always the audience seems to be immediately attracted by these bizarre combinations, since he has turned something which was discarded but nevertheless familiar; into an enigma. The audience faces its own trash with amazement. It is difficult to place Woodrow in an obvious, specific sculptural tradition (apart from a general dadaist and bricolage background), as the work is different from -what was around when I was a student at the end of the sixties. But the actual radicalness lies in the presentation of the sculptures, their entities consisting of the original object with its materia] transformed and attached to the new image object. In an almost Brechtian manner Woodrow insists on showing the mechanism of his working process, seemingly defying any regard for aesthetics. Needless to say, Woodrow is not to be mistaken for a process artist: At the moment one aspect of my sculpture is that it is very evident of how it was made. There is no secret about it. Also it should be mentioned that Woodrow has never been a student of Anthony Caro's as was recently stated in the catalogue of Caro's retrospective at the Serpentine.This making no secret of his art belongs to Woodrow's natural sense of analytical thinking. He finds it easy to repair technical instruments because he also knows how to take them apart, an ability which can be clearly followed up in his anistic development. While on one hand he would create a kind of contemporary fossil, burying a vacuum-cleaner in concrete and then -excavating it (The Long Aspirator; 1979), he would also destroy a television screen and meticulously place the bits and pieces in front of the destroyed set (Brixton Boys, Street Noise; 1979), or take apart a record-player down to the last screw and arrange the contents along side the frame of the apparatus, which was built by the artist. In doing this, he not only confronts industrial with artistic language, but completely demystifies today's sacred objects. Woodrow's dismantling process thus works towards a deeper awareness of those everyday objects and their socio-political implications, Eicht Bicycle Frames from 1980 represents the turning point for his working method, when he decided to actually -remake objects instead of dissecting them. One of the earliest examolcs is the Twin-Tub with Guitar- from 1981, a picce which IS now part of the Tate gallery's Collection. The new object is bent, twisted and hammered together in one picce. Once he had established this technique of working he was free to deal with the various images that he felt needed attention. Here the visual contcxt of animal versus waste material seems to be a recurring theme, whereby he often consciously baits ihc audience with what he calls the Bambi syndrome., using sentimental connotations to confront the spectator with the sculpture's dimension of hard facts. In-Sea-Lion-(1983), the Woodrow, Twin tub with guitar, 1981, Collection of the Taw Gallery, London Photo Edward Woodman animal is juggling with the skeleton of car bonnets (which made out of), clearly alluding that the sweet times of juggi nust be over. But there is more than one narrative le\ w ^wv -^.y, w.wa.1/ -.luui.ig mat inc sweet times ot juggling balls must be over. But there is more than one narrative level. As a sculpture it deals with the question of balance in a physical as we as transcendental sense: -1 use images of nature as symbols of a system, which is self-regulating if it is not interfered with, it just gets on with it and has built-in ways of controlling itself. Western industrial society gets the balances completely out of proponion, And it becomes clear that the fish, which is caught up in car bonnets, is not only unattainable for the sea-lion.