Kay Wood
Embedded within the paintings of Kay Wood is an engagement with the soft geometric fractals of the natural world, as well as the carving out of small contemplative spaces within the built environment. Detachment and connection, ironically, co-exist in the work as a whole. In detaching from overt description, Kay seeks to pry loose an alterity of ‘knowing’ that is less about the imposition of ideas onto ‘things’ and more about connection. This approach centres on allowing subconscious processes to influence the act of looking and making. Kay’s work emerges as a result of engagement with her world wherein phenomena are explored for what they do not ‘say’ – the feeling of the invisible within the visible. Surfaces are those things in which reflections of ourselves can be seen – in these works painting occupies the space between reality and imagination and the surface of these works can be read as feelings. At this level the work is a symbolic understanding of the metaphysical within all phenomena, even the most profoundly prosaic.
As per Corbin, the symbol announces a phase of consciousness distinct from rational evidence; it is the ‘cipher’ of a mystery, the only means of saying something that cannot be apprehended in any other way: a symbol is never explained, once and for all but must be deciphered over and over again, just as a musical score is never deciphered once and for all but calls for ever new execution which refutes knowing and embraces understanding and appreciation in the moment. Kay sees her work as intersubjective and follows Umberto Eco’s ideas on ‘informal’ art, in considering these works open in that they propose a wide range of interpretive possibilities and whose substantial indeterminacy allows for a number of possible readings, a constellation of elements that lend themselves to all sorts of reciprocal relationships. Sometimes the titles refer to actual places, sometimes they are lines from songs, elsewhere as in the case of recent works Please Explain?, A Painting is Not a Megaphone and You’re Not the Boss of Me they are a wry comment on the perpetual Q & A between artist and inner-critic. Embedded within the work there is also a drive to counter the increasing consumption driven rationalism in the world and to find beauty in chaos. Numbering of works is random, not algorithmic or chronological. Numbers may be related to places lived or used simply for their formal elegance. There is a refusal in these works to ‘finish’ and to provide ‘closure’ with a label. To this extent and as per Umberto Eco’s concept of “openness”, the decision to leave arrangements of some constituents of a work to the public or to chance – means that the open work is an interactive process between artist, the work, the world, and the viewer. They are offered up as visual poems.
Kay’s artistic influences range from Jean-Simeon Chardin, to Giorgio Morandi, Thomas Nozkowski, Gunter Forg, Jessica Stockholder and Amy Sillman (to name a few). Kay Wood studied at Sydney College of the Arts and has a BVA (Hons) and an MVA. She also has a BA (Hons) from Deakin University. Prior to her return to Perth in 2005 Kay had had fourteen solo shows and participated in numerous group exhibitions.
Curriculum Vitae
Kay-Wood-cv-new.docx (docx 22kB)
Exhibitions
- Wed 19 Aug - Wed 09 Sep 2020 'Expectation and Other Ironies' - Guest Artist Kay Wood
STALA CONTEMPORARY proudly presents a solo exhibition of new paintings by Kay Wood, continuing her dichotomous exploration of abstraction and representation. A gestural and expressive rawness permeates both her varied abstract motifs and the deliberately minimalised depictions of the figurative forms which sit companionably alongside them.
Kay Wood studied at Sydney College of the Arts and has a BVA (Hons) and an MVA. She also has a BA (Hons) from Deakin University. Kay grew up in country Western Australia. Prior to her return to Perth in 2005 Kay had had fourteen solo shows and participated in numerous group exhibitions.
