31/7/2003
Simon Wood
VTO, London
When The Party's Over
VTO welcomes Simon Wood for his second solo-exhibition in August 2003.
Wood's sculptures manipulate the detritus of everyday life. Constructed from
found, collected, and salvaged material, the works reveal an experiential
yet involuntary consent to modern life excess.
Obsessively collecting materials for later use, Wood's practice questions
the nature of ownership and consumption. In a society fixated by the
turnover of new products and built in obsolescence, his interest in
possession borders on the eternal. Rather than recycle waste materials, Wood
subverts their objecthood. The sculptures transgress various states to find
both political and escapist resonance.
'When the party's over' consists of many works scattered across the gallery
space. A podium presides over an empty battlefield strewn with cigarette
butts and yoghurt pots. Connected by strings, the pots echo the childhood
playtime of DIY communication against the disturbing nature of military
conquest.
At the entrance of the gallery, Wood has outlined the floor in chalk to
resemble a hopscotch grid. From this vantage point, Wood has thrown paper
airplanes, made from junk mail, across the gallery space aka the
battlefield. Using rejected credit card applications from virtually every
financial institution in London, Wood has created a view of a cityscape by
the gallery windows symbolizing the growth of capitalistic entrapment. In
the back gallery, a series of Å’robosaurus' skulls made from polysterene and
lit by ultraviolet light adorn the walls. The masks form a backdrop of the
dead in discussion. Party animals? World leaders? Military casualties?
In 1966, seminal architect R. Buckminster Fuller wrote forty strategic
questions entitled Design Strategy, later published in Fuller's Utopia or
Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity, 1969, p.352. He believed that to
achieve total success for all humanity forever, all interested parties would
need answers to these questions. At VTO Gallery, Bill, Duncan, Gavin, and
Simon, will tackle the question, 'What is Harmonic?' in an ongoing project
exploring the nature of harmony in many different media.
disorder
packaging
witchcraft
america
recycling
hopscotch
escapism
''What is harmonic''
bombs
the right to smoke
christianity
globalisation
drinking
''The hacienda does not exist''
archeology
the media
conversation
''This is not art, this is a rant''
From: me@woodensimon.freeserve.co.uk
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 12:18:34 +0000
VTO
96 Teesdale Street London E2 6PU
Open: Friday to Sunday 12-6pm or by appointment