Richard Woods: Inclosure Acts

Richard Woods has built an international reputation for his signature architectural transformations, paintings and sculpture that fold the history of the decorative arts, functional design and graphic language into intoxicatingly witty plays with image and surface. His architectural interventions are chiefly concerned with the re-surfacing of existing structures, proposing an absurd twist on the cult of home improvement and DIY aesthetics.

For Chapter, Woods has created new works in the Gallery and for the lightbox that are inspired by both the history of the building – sited as it is on a former cattle market – and by the Inclosure Acts (1604-1914) that radically transformed open fields and common land in the countryside. During this time, almost seven million acres of land became private - where once there were large, communal fields, land was now hedged and fenced off, and old boundaries disappeared.

In contrast, wall-based works reference the suburban in a series of Mono Prints. Based on hard-edged renditions of Mock Tudor decoration, the paintings are suburbia meets Neo Geo – the past made future.