Henry Wood | The Work

Statement

Henry Wood's work is inspired by an acute and intense awareness of the world around him. His observations are based on life from the trivial to the profound, informed by themes from the mundane to the heroic. 

Using found wood, bone and other raw and primitive detritus, Henry Wood sets out to explore the human condition using the figure to embody his thoughts and ideas towards our relationship with nature, sun, sky and universe. Reverence towards his inner child and its intuitive way of working, the wilderness, native creativity and its role in spiritual connection and celebration  blesses these free expressions with a playful and mischievous quality whilst being both poetic and honest in spirit.

Wood's latest body of work explores his ideas, thoughts and feelings through his interactions with and observations of the two greatest agents that constitute the life blood of London - the river and the population. Both respectively possess a uniquely raw and spectacular spirit defined and identified by a special relationship grounded on a rich history of acknowledging one another.  His observations now revel and reflect these two bodies sharing a new connection based on angst and isolation, a repressed and contained existence, a total submission to a constructed and artificial route of flow. He sees the two greatest spirits that occupy and make London gradually becoming isolated and lost in an environment that has been designed without a conscious appreciation for their wellbeing. His figurative sculpture reflects these concepts as they appear like a cross between primitive effigy and plaything. The way they stand and position themselves expresses a sort of uncomfortable insecurity, together with the childish primitive construction and stripped back aesthetics the figures are truly a body for which these spirits can dwell.

Nuances found in the materials which are combed from the Thames or found in his immediate environment bring added depth to the pieces by layering in their own hidden stories and histories having previously been shaped by human hands and/or the elemental forces of the river. Resurrecting these materials into new forms is informed by a certain amount of unconscious creative control his approach is childlike; roaming the materials exploring forms, lines and colour intuitively leaving spontaneity to set a precedence, feeling what works and looking at how the sculptures interact with and occupy space.