Featuring a range of media, including sculpture, installation, photography and jewellery making, this is the first monograph on the work of British artist Mark Woods.
Woods (born 1961 in Surrey, UK) is an artist with a background in contemporary jewellery production and boat building. He produces elaborate artefacts that blur the boundaries between jewellery, fine art, fetish objects and items from cabinets of curiosities. Unnerving and evocative, the viewer is confronted with exquisite beauty, sophisticated craftsmanship and an awakening of unexpected emotions. Woods's works invites the viewer to leave their comfort zone and question human desires.
Formula + Fetish explores four aspects of his practice: "Objects" - luxurious objects of desire and contemporary art fetishes; "Staged Self-Portraits" - a performance with the camera lens; "Creative Images" - a joining of objects; and "Jewellery" - the origins of the artist's skills in object making.
Alongside visually striking photography, documenting his key exhibitions, the book includes critical essays by leading art writers Paul Carey-Kent, Michael Petry and Peter Suchin, who offer individual and sometimes contradicting responses to Woods's world of objects and imagery.
Mark Woods (b. 1961, Surrey) is a British artist with a background in contemporary jewellery production and in boat building. He produces highly elaborate artefacts that blur the boundaries between jewellery, fine art, fetish objects and items from a cabinet of curiosities.
He co-directs a gallery with his wife, Rebecca Scott, in Kendal, Cumbria called Cross Lane Projects and the couple have also opened a salon space in Shoreditch, Cross Lane Projects: Vestry St.
His recent solo exhibitions include
Mal-content at the Cable Depot, London,
Absorption at Cross Lane Projects and
No Mirror at the Open Studio for Lakes Alive, Cross Lane Projects, (2019).
Woods's recent group exhibitions include
Zero Gravity in Sussex (2022),
A Modern Capricho, Cross Lane Projects: Vestry St, London, (2022),
Dirty Pictures, St Leonards-on-Sea, (2022); Cross Lane Projects at London Art Fair, (2021),
Made With..., Cross Lane Projects, (2020) and
Imperfectum, Cello Factory, Waterloo, London, (2020).
Michael Petry is an artist, author and Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) London. Petry co-founded the Museum of Installation, was Guest Curator at the Kunstakademiet, Oslo, and was Curator of the Royal Academy Schools Gallery. Petry co-authored
Installation Art (1994) and
Installation in the New Millennium (2003), and authored
Abstract Eroticism (1996),
A Thing of Beauty Is... (1997) and
The Trouble with Michael (a monograph of his practice, 2001). His book
Hidden Histories: 20th Century Male Same Sex Lovers in the Visual Arts (2004) accompanied the exhibition "Hidden Histories" that he curated for The New Art Gallery Walsall.
Golden Rain (2008) accompanied his installation for the "On the Edge" exhibition for Stavanger 2008, European Capital of Culture. Petry's book
The Art of Not Making: The New Artist Artisan Relationship was published in 2011. More recent books accompanying exhibitions include
Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still-Life Tradition (2013) and
The Word is ART (2018) for Thames & Hudson. Petry's latest book
In League With Devils (2023), which includes a forward by Stephen Fry, was published for his solo show of the same name at the Dadian Gallery, Henry Luce III Centre for the Arts and Religion, Washington DC.
Paul Carey-Kent is a freelance art writer and curator, and a member of the International Association of Art Critics. He is Visual Fine Arts Editor of
Seisma Magazine and writes regularly for
Art Monthly,
STATE and the Canadian magazine
Border Crossings. He has a weekly column online for
FAD Magazine and a monthly interview online for
Artlyst. He is active on Instagram and co-runs a project on Early Works by famous artists. Paul has curated some 50 exhibitions: recent examples include "Splash! The Haiku Show" (White Conduit Projects, Islington), "St Leonards Meets the World" (Electro Studios, St Leonards) and "Seismic: Art meets Science" (GIANT, Bournemouth). He recently published
The Book of Ladders in Mexico, in collaboration with locally based sculptor Adeline de Monseignat.
Peter Suchin is an artist, critic and curator. He has published over 350 essays and reviews in a wide range of books and publications, including
Art & Design,
Art Monthly,
Frieze,
The Guardian,
Here and Now,
Variant and
Mute. His catalogue essays include writings for the London galleries Annely Juda, Standpoint, Danielle Arnaud and Domo Baal. Among Suchin's solo displays of paintings and installations are "Memory Objects" (ETSU, Johnson City, USA, 2002), "Compendiums and Palimpsests" (T1+2 Artspace, London, 2003), "A Critical Contagion in the Quiet of the Night" (& Model, Leeds, 2014) and "Optimum State" (Gaunston Studios, London, 2024). Group shows include "Lost in Translation", (HAU, Athens, Greece, 2004), "Merz=" (Bregenz Kunstverein, Austria, 2006), "Climbing the Underside of the Ladder" (Durden & Ray, Los Angeles, USA, 2022) and "Forces of the Small" (Filet, London, 2023).
