Bill Woodrow

Bill Woodrow was born in Oxfordshire in 1948. He received his artistic education at the Winchester College of Art, The Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and the Chelsea School of Art. It was during the 1970s that Woodrow emerged in the international art scene along with artists Richard Deacon and Tony Cragg. His first solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery was in 1972. In 1986, Woodrow was a finalist for the Turner Prize. Woodrow’s early work is typified by materials found in dumps which were then embedded in plaster. He then turned to larger commercial goods where the original structures could still be discerned. Using a wide variety of items and then converting them into a new context, as with Soap (1988) Woodrow was able to provide these objects with new narratives and contexts.