Bill Woodrow

Bill Woodrow (born 1 November 1948) is a British sculptor.

Early years and education Bill Woodrow was born on 1 November 1948 near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. He received his education at the Winchester College of Art (1967–1968), the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London (1968–1971), and the Chelsea School of Art (1971–1972).

Artistic career Woodrow's Sitting on History (1995) was purchased for the British Library by Carl Djerassi and Diane Middlebrook in 1997. The sculpture, with its ball and chain, refers to the book as the captor of information from which we cannot escape. Woodrow was one of a number of British sculptors to emerge in the late 1970s on to the international contemporary art scene, together with fellow artists like Richard Deacon and Tony Cragg. Materials found in dumps, used car lots and scrap yards formed the raw materials for his early works; by partly embedding them in plaster, he made them seem as if they had been excavated. Subsequently, he turned to large consumer goods like cars and refrigerators. While their original structures could still be discerned, he cut portions out of them and reattached the portions to the main structures so that they appeared to be connected through umbilical cords. He held his first solo exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1972.