Robert Hood
Shared Lines: Christchurch / Sendai exhibiting artist
Prospect 145, 210x297 300dpi (Aluminum ingot) photo by Kate Whitley
b. 1974, Christchurch. Lives and works in Christchurch.
Robert Hood graduated in 1999 with a BFA in Sculpture from the School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury and is currently completing his MA there. Hood was the Olivia Spencer Bower Fellow in 2007. Recent exhibitions include: Prospect, Wellington Art Gallery, 2011; From a City Forsaken by its Gods, Firstdraft Gallery Sydney, 2011; Backroom Sectional Earth Office Pathology, Jonathan Smart Gallery,
Christchurch, 2010; Wrecked Pathological Stimulus Soap Rotational Vacuum Idle Earth Manifold Detergent Runtime Dada Glue, The PhysicsRoom, Christchurch 2009; Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon, Auckland Triennial, 2010; The Wrecked Kilometre, HSP, Christchurch 2008;
Cyclical Adjustment Vacuum Idle Manifold, Artspace, Auckland, 2008;The Big Bull Market Jonathan Smart Gallery, Christchurch, 2008;Headway: New Artists Show, Artspace, Auckland 2006; Out of Erewhon,Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch, 2006; &:Ampersand, HSP,Christchurch, 2004. Hood’s work is represented in the collections of the Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna o Waiwhetu and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. He is represented by Jonathan Smart Gallery,Christchurch, New Zealand.
Incorporating found and collected abstracts of youth culture, Robert Hood has developed a practice that is focused on the suburban streets. Hood has a keen eye for the democratising effect of street culture and so draws curious parallels between the leftovers of consumer culture and the forms of high modernism. In a down-home homage to American minimalist Walter de Maria's Broken Kilometer, 1979, Hood made The Wrecked Kilometre, 2009, from collected road markers. Equally, his most exhibited work to date is a collection of used car windows stacked in a heap on the floor, in dual recognition of their industrial waste and structural beauty. This stack was originally accompanied by photographs of 'burnouts' or tyre marks made by 'boy racers' on the lonely back roads of Canterbury. The lazy commerce of fuel and vehicle detritus lingers in his work as both critique of consumption and a sensitive reflection on how the material world might be improved.
Hood's work has been exhibited in the annual new artists show at Artspace, Auckland, various artist run spaces nationally and most recently in a major solo show Cognitive Pathological Rolled Oats Rotational Vacuum Idle Axis Error Index Consumer Runtime Stimulus Dada Glue, The Physics Room, Christchurch, 2009. This exhibition included remixed elements from his recent projects alongside newly salvaged materials highlighting the waste, catharsis and potential for transformation through a shifted context.
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