Saturday, April 10

Long Distance Information by Bill Woodrow

In 1983 the British Council exhibited "Transformations - New Sculpture from Britain" at the São Paulo Biennal showing the sculptures of six artists. Bill Woodrow was chosen and "Long Distance Information, 1983" was one of his works. He has a diverse oeuvre and you can search at this site his many periods even though the photographies online sometimes are not very good. In the eighties he did several works by cutting the shape of an object from a metal structure and transforming the two-dimensional projection into three dimensional objects. Long Distance Information was the title of a popular song by Chuck Berry which celebrated the possibility of talking to a child by telephone across a continent and Woodrow draw from an old car bonnet the shapes of a photographic camera, walkie-talkies and a bullet. What these objects have in common are speed if you will - even the bullet which is faster than a knife for instance if you intend to kill. It is very difficult and sometimes unfair to attribute meaning to the work of some artists. But I cannot help thinking that Woodrow predicted cell phones. :) I am sorry Bill. But what really strikes me the most in the work of this period is this ability to make the illusion that the object was taken from the metal shape. I think it is amazing.