Kate woods

Kate Woods collects found scenic photographs and landscape paintings – imaginary non-sites, places you will never physically arrive in yet seem strangely familiar, a replicated world indistinguishable from the real world. Abstract geometric cardboard forms, crafted by the artist, placed on the “original” found object, float across the picture plane. The collage is then re-photographed. Along with the appropriated images, she works with cardboard assemblages and painting within her photographs to re-construct and re-contextualise cultural and art historical events.

In 2012 Woods was the recipient of an Asia New Zealand Foundation residency at Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing. While there she researched how the beginnings of contemporary art practice evolved in China, and became fascinated by the Xiamen Dada Group. Woods’ photographs created during the residency reference the fleeting happenings of the Xiamen Dada Group. She was interested in re-siting the events and their residue in environments sourced from contemporary Beijing such as Chinese building sites and billboard hoardings. Occasional images in this series use found photography as a site. A New Zealand hand-coloured farm scene becomes a backdrop for an imagined re-siting of the same events, dislocated from their original setting, occurring in a different time and place.

Kate Woods was born in Auckland in 1981. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University (2002). She has exhibited in artist-run spaces, dealer and public galleries including XYZ Collective, Tokyo and City Gallery Wellington.

Courtesy: Bartley + Company