Kay Wood

Wood’s recent works continues her interest in ontology, especially that of art objects. Her paintings (considered objects) are a mix of abstraction with still life and minimal figuration. They are combined in arrangements that can also include a variety of readymade and handcrafted things. There are evident imperfections, irregularities, flawed techniques, and mundane materials sitting askew. Overall, she considers her work abstract and this reflects her belief that no matter what concept/images we apply to things in order to describe them, we are simply veiling the world of objects in a mist of our own meaning-making – a model that ultimately fails but is destined to persist. Although bound by our condition to try to engage with the world and understand it, Wood feels that, paradoxically, this is actually not possible – we do not own things, we do not actually know them – despite the names and function we give them. She shifts the primacy in her making from subject to objects, and how things change in relation to their contextualisation, creating, in a sense, new objects that cannot be explained in terms of their specific function, nor by their classification as figurative or abstract– quasi independent entities exhibiting a certain inwardness that withdraws behind the visible qualities.