Amy Petra Woodward: Face Down
Chandelier is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of new work by British artist Amy Petra Woodward.
Taking a variety of traditions as her starting point — including The Pictures Generation, Light and Space, monochrome painting, minimalism and performance in respect to spectatorship — Woodward will exhibit a set of specially manufactured works on reflective fabric (Red Dress/Re-dress, 2013-14) and optical display film (Display Enhancements, 2014). Some of these objects are wall-based, and others resist this formality, instead hanging draped or arranged in various positions that draw attention to their materiality.
The exhibition's title refers to the perspective that in a world where we are driven to desire and consume quickly, the face of something is often obscured or refined to benefit a particular reading of that object as a commodity. By emphasising the presence of various sides to a single object, Woodward asks how we might confront a surface to find a particular relationship or connection - a way in that invites our attention.
In Red Dress/Re-dress (2013-14), Woodward prints film stills onto retroreflective fabric using ultraviolet finished inks, treating the material as a sculptural object by folding and pleating. In Display Enhancements (2014), the artist applies pigment onto optical display film made from lacquered acrylic. Having taken apart computer monitors or manufacturing new film herself, Woodward offers posterity to this material by separating it from its casing, or increasing its scale.
At the centre of Woodward’s practice are the concepts of display and spectatorship. Activated by the reflective quality of the materials the artist uses, and importantly by the changes in colour and texture that occur when one varies the angle from which the work is viewed, Woodward draws both an analogy and a contrast between single viewing perspective in the history of classical representation, and the contemporary act of looking by skim-reading several images or texts quickly, now prevalent in the age of fast-paced, networked culture.
An essay by Chris Fite-Wassilak will accompany the artist's work.
About the Artist
Amy Petra Woodward (b.1986) graduated from The Royal Academy Schools in 2013 and previously studied at Camberwell College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions include a solo presentation at Palazzo Peckham, Venice Biennale (2013) and the Selina Chenevière Award solo exhibition at The Royal Academy (2014). She has completed a studio and research residency with Unilever and has works in both the Unilever and V22 Collections.
