Bill Woodrow

22 Feb — 18 Mar 2006

Waddington Galleries is pleased to present its first one man exhibition of sculptures by Bill Woodrow. The exhibition will include twenty-four works produced between 1997 and 2005 but will focus predominantly on sculptures of the last two years.

The show can be loosely split into four groups:

- works referring to The Beekeeper theme
- Missile 2 and Skullspawn from 2003 and 2004
respectively
- a group of Navigator sculptures
- the most recent group of sculptures : Evaluators,
Invigilators or Negotiators

Woodrow first started working on The Beekeeper in 1996 and continues to return to this theme. He states It seemed a very rich vein to tap visually, materially, narratively, formally and conceptually. The sculptures range from near monochrome, painted bronze compositions to complex visual narratives concerning the beekeeping process.

With Missile 2 and Skullspawn Woodrow contrasts the world of nature with themes of weapons and death; on close inspection, the main elements of the works consist of frogspawn resulting from two mating frogs, which sit on the top of missile-like forms - I use images of nature as a symbol 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 appears to get the balance completely out of proportion.

The Navigator series of sculptures consist of ceramic animal skulls and geometric shapes of coloured, laminated MDF (medium density fibreboard) arranged to suggest human or animal bodies.

The final group of new works, the Evaluators, Invigilators and Negotiators, also combine ceramic skulls with brightly coloured MDF. Each sculpture has a delicate skeletal body formed by bronze twigs.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with the text of a conversation between Woodrow and Richard Deacon.

Born in 1948, Bill Woodrow studied at Winchester School of Arts (1967-1968) and at St. Martin�s School of Art, London (1968-1971) before spending one year at Chelsea School of Art, London (1971-1972). His first solo exhibition was at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1972. Since then he has shown his work all over the world at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1983), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1984) and the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin. In the early 1980s he represented Britain at Biennales in Sydney (1982), Paris (1982, 1985) and Sao Paulo (1983) and in 1986 he was a finalist for the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery, London. Further solo exhibitions of his work were held at the Camden Arts Centre (1995), the Tate Gallery (1996) and the South London Gallery (2001). Woodrow's work is held in public collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Tate Gallery in London. The artist lives and works in London.