Texts by Charlotte Mullins, Darian Leader, and Ela Bittencourt
Clare Woods is one of the most idiosyncratic painters working in Britain today. Her highly colouristic paintings hover between abstraction and representation, expressing both a poetic romanticism and an unnerving psychic charge. Her unique and distinctive painting style is informed by her background in sculpture. She uses large, bold, and gestural brushstrokes of thick, fluid paint to make figurative paintings that are usually based on photographs of real objects, interiors, and people, but enlarged, cropped, and distorted almost to the point of illegibility. In this way, she conceptually empties the source photograph to replace it with a new interpretation. This physical breakdown of the image during the act of painting forces the viewer to question their ability to decipher what is in front of them. Much of Woods’ recent work is concerned with the fine line between mortality, fragility, sickness, and health, while at the same time creating a psychological space that is shared and inhabited by artist and viewer alike.
This beautiful book follows Woods’ previous monograph Strange Meetings, published by Art / Books in 2016. It presents all of the artist’s most important paintings of the past decade, as well as the many prints and collages that have grown out of her painting practice in recent years. Critic and art historian Charlotte Mullins writes a lively and accessible introduction to the artist’s work and discusses some of its precedents and influences from art history, while psychoanalyst Darian Leader considers the psychological roots of her practice. Writer Ela Bittencourt completes the volume with a text that examines the push-and-pull between familiarity and alienation, knowability and ambiguity, that characterizes Woods’ alluring, seductive, and powerful works.
Clare Woods RA (b. 1972) was elected a Royal Academician in 2022. She completed her MA at Goldsmith’s College, London in 1999, following a BA at Bath School of Art in 1994. She has presented solo shows at Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Simon Lee Gallery, London; Martin Asbæk Gallery, Copenhagen; Cristea Roberts Gallery, London; and Buchmann Galerie, Berlin. Recent solo shows include the touring exhibition Between Before and After at Norrtälje Kunsthal, Sweden (2024), CCA Museum, Andratx, Spain (2023), and Serlachius Museums, Mänttä, Finland (2023). She has had recent institutional solo exhibitions at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Mead Gallery, University of Warwick; Dundee Contemporary Art; Harewood House, Yorkshire; Southampton City Art Gallery; and Hepworth Wakefield. Group exhibitions include Fernweh Space, Beijing; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; Tate St Ives; and Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York. In 2012, she was commissioned to create a permanent ceramic mural for the London 2012 Olympic Park, and in 2015 she produced a 15 x 8 metre painting for Aarhus VIA University College, Denmark. Other public commissions include a vast façade for a residential building in Chelsea, London (2005–7); a permanent ceramic mural at Hampstead Heath Station (2010–11); and a large-scale painting for The Hive library, Worcester (2012). A monograph on Woods entitled Strange Meetings was published in 2016 by Art / Books, London, and her work has been featured in Frontrunner magazine, Studio International, Art Newspaper, Frieze, Independent, and Financial Times. Her work is held in many national and international public and private collections, including Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, USA; Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Arts Council Collection, UK; British Council, UK; Royal Academy of Arts Collection, London, UK; CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain; Colección VAC, Valencia, Spain; Government Art Collection, UK; National Museum Wales, Cardiff; Dakis Joannou Collection Foundation, Athens, Greece. She is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Buchmann Galerie, Berlin; and Martin Asbæk Gallery, Copenhagen; and Cristea Roberts Gallery London.
Charlotte Mullins is an art critic, writer, and broadcaster. She is currently writing Art Nation, a new history of British and Irish art, and has recently published catalogue essays on Ali Banisadr, Yinka Shonibare cbe, and Vicken Parsons. Her latest books include A Little History of Art (2022), A Little Feminist History of Art (2019), and Rachel Whiteread (2017). She writes a weekly column for Country Life and is the presenter of the podcast Making a Mark, produced by Cristea Roberts Gallery in London.
Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst and author. He is a founding member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research in London. His books include The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression; Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction; Why Can’t We Sleep?; Strictly Bi-Polar; What Is Madness?; and most recently Is It Ever Just Sex? He writes frequently about contemporary art.
Ela Bittencourt is a writer living in Berlin and São Paulo. She has written extensively about contemporary art and film, particularly women artists and art from Latin America. She contributes regularly to magazines such as Artforum, frieze, and the Art Newspaper, and to catalogues and books, most recently Night Fever: Film and Photography After Dark (2024), with an essay on the Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz. She is currently working on a book about the American experimental film-maker Lynne Sachs.
