Summer Buzz I Bill Woodrow at Roche Court
Bill Woodrow
Celloswarm, 2002
Bronze, stone and gold leaf
211 x 95 x 96 cm
6ft 11 x 3ft 1 ⅜ x 3ft 1 ¾ in.
Edition 4 of 8 plus 4 APs
"Periodically changing the way I make sculpture is important to me, no matter how successful a certain way of working may be at the time. Finding new ways enables me to question my own position as well as today’s continually changing values." - Bill Woodrow
Bill Woodrow’s Celloswarm developed from a time in the late 1980s when the artist began to cast work in bronze, a transition from his direct manipulation of found objects. The ‘swarm series’ was an intense body of work that involved covering ordinary, inanimate objects with frenzied swarms of glimmering golden bees suggesting movement, life and activity. In Celloswarm, the buzz of the swarm finds correspondence in the cello’s resonating sounds.
The swarm series was a response to Woodrow’s experience at a beekeeping course in the late 1990s, as a cluster of bees coated his hand. He spoke of this sensation, describing how it was "incredibly light and there was this slight movement that you could just feel on your skin and there was this constant temperature. It was a very light, delicate touch. There was something fabulous about having this thing on your hand and that experience stuck with me."
Bill Woodrow
Endeavour, 1994
Signed & dated ‘Bill Woodrow 1994’ on barrel
Bronze
208 x 445 x 174 cm
81 ¾ x 175 ¼ x 68 ½ in.
Endeavour (Cannon Dredged from the First Wreck of the Ship of Fools) is Woodrow’s 10th sculpture devoted to the theme The Ship of Fools, a series that illustrated the foolishness of mankind not learning from the past. Appearing as a cannon looking out over the rolling landscape of Roche Court, all is not as it seems. Its wheels are made up of a bread board, a drum, a coil of rope and a book stand, alongside a pile of globe-cannonballs. The work is both made up of items that one would find outside of a public institution, a memorial to war, but also ordinary objects like cartwheels and agricultural machinery.
Endeavour originated from a cardboard maquette that was shown at the Barbican Art Gallery. After being cast in bronze it made its debut at Sculpture at Goodwood in 1994, and subsequently at the Tate Gallery, London in Bill Woodrow: Fools’ Gold, 1996.
Bill Woodrow
Clockswarm, 2001
Bronze and Gold leaf
23 x 34.3 x 10 cm
9 x 1ft 1 1/2 x 4 in.
Edition 2 of 8
Both Celloswarm and Clockswarm are early instances of Woodrow using gold leaf. Discussing the use of gold leaf in a 2005 interview with Richard Deacon, Woodrow suggests "it is illusory, a magician’s trick so to speak, giving an object of little value the surface appearance of value and status".
Bill Woodrow
North Shore beat of the Loch Maree Fisheries, 2003
Linoprint on white Zerkall 270gsm paper
Image: 41 x 31 cm
Edition of 200
The New Art Centre has exhibited work by Bill Woodrow regularly for many years. His first solo exhibition at Roche Court Sculpture Park, In Awe of the Pawnbroker (2000) was shown in our, at the time, newly built Sculpture Gallery.
Woodrow has exhibited extensively with solo shows at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield; Palacio Nacional de Queluz, Oporto, Portugal; Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London; Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt, Germany and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, at the end of 2013. His work is in public and private collections including the Government Art Collection, UK; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Moderna Museet, Sweden; Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal and the Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, Netherlands.
