Bill Woodrow

Bill Woodrow (b. 1948, Oxfordshire, England) recycles discarded domestic goods which he then fashions into new sculptures. In the early 1980s he built his reputation on a series of ‘cut-out’ sculptures. With these, Woodrow manipulates and transforms the metal surface of a household appliance into another familiar object without detaching it from the original. For example, a car door is turned into a shotgun while the two remain joined yet separately recognisable. For Woodrow, sourcing materials from skips and rubbish dumps is not only expedient, but provides a source of unpredictability and vitality which is the key to his work. The remodelling of form from one context to another lends a narrative element to Woodrow’s work which has continued with his later work in bronze and welded steel.

Woodrow’s first solo exhibition was at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1972. In the early 1980s he represented Britain at Biennales in Sydney (1982), Paris (1982, 1985) and São Paulo (1983) and in 1986 he was a finalist in 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), London. 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.

Bill Woodrow lives and works in London.