‘PROP’ an Installation by Lee Woodman [Images]

From the installation at the G Space gallery in 2020:

PROP

Lee Woodman seeks to understand the material world by contrasting the relationships between the final product and the tools needed to build it. A tool can be anything that facilitates a task; in many cases it would be near impossible to achieve without it.

In this work, Prop, Woodman is exposing the relationship between the built structures of scaffold which are temporary or secondary in nature, to the ‘other thing’ for which the scaffold was built for.

Using triangular truss forms as the building blocks, these units are made from lightweight timber and have been used in multiple previous projects. They are pieces of a family of parts that can fit to one another and be added and subtracted to meet the required objective. The objective in this case is to hold up the text, be sturdy enough to withstand outside forces, house the necessary electrics etc, and otherwise be as invisible as possible.

PUBLIC literally refers to the end product, while PUB IC points to behind the scenes activity. The built in ‘failure’ tropes the glitching neon sign in disrepair and reflects the relationship between what we are supposed to see versus the unseen.

As a builder, designer, art technician and artist, Woodman witnesses the schemes and machinations that are seldom seen by the ‘audience’. Smoke and mirrors as tools for whatever they might be needed for. The end product in this case is almost irrelevant; the tools and materials needed to get there however are worthy of investigation.

June 2020

Lee Woodman