Jetsam Poetry: the Sculpture of Bill Woodrow 1972-90: Art Basel OVR: Pioneers

'The shattered TVs in Brixton Boys; Street Noise, 1979 […] are explicitly destructive, not only referring to wider social events (vandalism, surveillance and the failure of consumer society) but also presenting a kind of three-dimensional blank, gaping canvas.’

Julia Kelly & Jon Wood, The Sculpture of Bill Woodrow, pp.59-60

One of the first two works of its type, Spin Dryer with Bicycle Frame including Handlebars signalled the inception of Woodrow’s now iconic ‘cut-out’ sculptures made solely from washing machines or spin dryers.

The black and white image above shows the work at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, installed alongside Twin-Tub with Guitar and Twin-Tub with Chainsaw (both 1981), now held in the respective collections of Tate, London, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Australian Landscape was made soon after Woodrow’s participation in the 4th Biennale of Sydney in 1982. Inspired by the country’s lunar landscapes and oneiric indigenous culture, Woodrow here renders an Aboriginal-inspired mask out of the side panel of a microfiche reader. An image of a rock formation resembling Uluru is painted in acrylic over the backlit screen; an augury, perhaps, of the West's relationship with a natural world increasingly experienced through the digital image.

The cold, militaristic list of objects that make up Needle – artillery shells, steel cash box and enamel paint – belie the work’s organic, even intimate, imagery. Green leaves, cut from the shells, sprout outwards, transforming an instrument of war into an organic symbol of growth. Two spoons, carved from the lid of the cashbox, lie nestled within, sewn together with the needle and thread that give the work its name. Like The Swallow (1984), a work that presents a flying bird cut from an artillery shell, Needle shows how closely human activity is entwined with nature, yet posits a more positive relationship than many of his sculptures. 

Silent Running brings together organic, industrial and militaristic imagery. A curved ventilation duct precariously balanced upon a barrel forms the foundational structure of the work, from which is cut a small black bird sucked into a funnel, leaving behind a stark, red, silhouetted hole. A small armoured tank bearing a missile crawls across its curved top. Picturing ventilation, wind and flight, Woodrow expresses the silent running of his title, an oblique comment on the destructive tendencies of human nature.

Made in 1990, only a few years after the Chernobyl disaster, Meltdown appears to critique Western society's prioritisation of power over understanding. The gold leaf evokes the natural hue of the uranium ore typically used for the generation of nuclear energy; whilst the key is left uncast, neglected, unused for any form of 'unlocking'.