Please join us to celebrate the opening of It’s for you, a selection of digitally mediated works by Colin Woods.
In her introduction to Artificial Hells, theorist Claire Bishop defines participation in art as that “… in which people constitute the central artistic medium and material, in the manner of theatre and performance”.
Through the selection of works presented in this exhibition, Belfast-born sound artist Colin Woods ponders whether works of art are best considered as entities in and of themselves, or, rather, if they would be more accurately considered with respect to the association they sustain to an audience, whether this be at the level of the role played by audience as interlocutor, or in the profound sense of acting as artistic material related by Bishop in her influential text Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012).
By questioning the essential ontology of art works along these lines, the pieces presented traverse a spectrum of “closed” and “open” outlined by Italian semiotician Umberto Eco in his 1962 text, Opera aperta (published in English as The Open Work in 1989), probing a notion of art as autobiographic-trace.
Biography:
Born in Belfast (Ireland), Colin James Woods migrated to Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2002.
He is currently a postgraduate researcher at AUT‘s Colab where his research encompasses a range of projects including sound installations and sculptures, live improvised electronic and acoustic works, and compositions for conventional instruments and ensembles.
Prior to his moving, Woods was a guitarist with Irish punk band Music for the Deaf (not to be confused the later US band of the same name) and participant in UK/Ireland based Allotropes experimental collective. His current interests include experimental music (both composed and improvised), video, song writing and performance, as well as composition for conventional solo instruments and ensembles.
He is a regular participant at events organised by Auckland improv collective, Vitamin S, and performs as one half of the duo Toy Triptech (with Rohan Evans).
Opens – Thursday 2 November, 5.30pm (w. refreshments from Liberty Breweries)
Hours – Tuesday – Saturday, 12.00pm – 4.00pm.
Closes – Saturday 25 November 4.00pm.