Background
William Robert (Bill) Woodrow was born on November 1, 1948 in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom.
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William Robert (Bill) Woodrow was born on November 1, 1948 in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom.
Bill studied at Winchester School of Art, St Martin's School of Art, London, and Chelsea School of Art, London.
Bill had his first solo exhibition in 1972 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh organised a major survey show of his sculpture in 1986, and Fools Gold, an exhibition of his bronze sculpture of the 1990s was mounted by the Tate Gallery, London in 1996, subsequently touring to Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt, Germany.
Bill has twice represented Britain at the Bienal de São Paulo, first in 1983 in the group exhibition, ‘Transformations, New Sculpture from Britain’ at the XVII Bienal, and later with a solo showing at the XXI Bienal in 1991. His work has been included in many important group exhibitions including: Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany in 1987, ‘Metropolis’, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin in 1991, and ‘Un Siècle de Sculpture Anglaise’ at the Galerie National du Jeu de Paume, Paris in 1996.
Woodrow lives and works in London. Woodrow's early works incorporated everyday household objects, such as vacuum cleaners and hairdryers, which he embedded in plaster or concrete so that they appeared partially excavated like latter day archaeological remains.
Throughout the 1980s, he continued to use domestic objects as his source material, re-cycling and constructing sculpture which created new life out of the defunct and discarded. Various objects were cut from the original source but remained held to it by a metal umbilicus, as with Long Distance Information.
In 1989 he took up bronze casting and created a large body of figurative work based on themes related to issues concerning global survival. Following the solo exhibition of these works at the Tate Gallery in 1996, Woodrow sought a new approach to making sculpture and began working on a large and ongoing body of work with the theme of The Beekeeper.
Several exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts in London have featured his works, including Earth: Art of a Changing World (2009) and Modern British Sculpture (2011). Between 30 March and 29 September 2013, Woodrow curated the exhibition Here, There and Somewhere in Between at Hatfield House in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. A joint project between the historic country house and the Royal Academy, the show included Woodrow's piece Endeavour: Cannon Dredged from the First Wreck of the Ship of Fools as well as works by Michael Craig-Martin, Richard Deacon and Gary Hume. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Royal Academy between 7 November 2013 and 16 February 2014.
Woodrow has undertaken a number of major commissions, including his largest bronze sculpture to date, Regardless of History, for the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London in 2000-2001. He was a finalist for the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery in 1986, and winner of the Anne Gerber Award at the Seattle Museum of Art, United States in 1988. He was elected a Royal Academician in the sculpture category in May 2002.
Car Door, Ironing Board and Twin-Tub with North American Indian Head-Dress
1981Cell
1997Cerium (From The Periodic Table)
1994Closed Book
2005Elephant
1984English Heritage - Humpty Fucking Dumpty
1987Honey Flower
1997Closed Book
2005Rack
2000The Glass Oar
1989Twin-Tub with Guitar
1981Well Done
1987Winged Box 2
1998Quotations: "Periodically changing the way I make sculpture is important to me, no matter how successful a particular 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."
