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See & Do

Julia Wood

Our archive of Julia Wood (1953-2002) contains her notebooks, interviews, press cuttings, sketches and more, telling the story of an artist rising through the 1980s London art scene.

A pair of hands holding two simple sculptures, one black and one white. There are roughly palm-sized, round at one end and flat at the other, with a y-shaped line carved into the rounded end to make them look somewhat like bums.

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Photo looking down into a rounded room with a black and white tiled floor, containing two large figurative sculptures. A red streak of plasticine partially covers both sculptures and a section of the floor.

Interior of a brick building, possibly a former warehouse. Painted across two of the white walls and part of the ceiling is a mural of faces, human figures and a wolf.

Art installation featuring a white door painted with a large red comma shape at the top and a smaller, rounder blue shape beneath.

Two simple human figures, one red and one blue, have been painted on a wall. They look to be either fighting or making love; it's deliberately hard to tell which.

A folder of small square photos of an exhibition by Julia Wood. In one, the artist casually leans against a wall next to her sculpture.

Blue exhibition flyer advertising 'New British Sculpture' in random lettering, featuring the artists Mark Ingham, John Plowman, Hermione Wiltshire and Julia Wood.

A simple line sketch by Julia Wood of a standing nude male figure, as seen from behind. He has a hand on one hip, and his face is tilted down to the right.

Sketch by Julia Wood of the legs and torso of a female figure, stylised to be composed of a few simple curves. It is covered with numbers, probably pertaining to the size of a planned sculpture.

A small curved stone has had some simple lines carved into it to appear like a female body.

About the artist

Little has been written or published on the life and works of artist Julia Wood (1953-2002). Through biographies, interviews, exhibition publicity and photographs from the archive we are able to tell the story of an amazing artist rising through the London art scene of the 1980s.

Julia Wood began her studies at Bristol Polytechnic (1971-72) and then Exeter College of Art (1972-75). She then attended The Royal College of Art in London (1975-78), where she was a student alongside the likes of Tony Cragg and Richard Deacon.

After her studies, Wood exhibited in London and beyond. By the early 1980s Wood had participated in several group shows, and in 1984 exhibited solo for the first time at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, London.

Wood often created site-specific work, reacting to the architecture of the building she was exhibiting in. One review of her work at the ICA in 1984 said that when responding to these surroundings, Wood “seems both to destroy it and emphasise it.”

Wood based herself at this time at her home studio in the East End of London. She commented that in London “you’re bombarded with people and their different problems and beliefs – both on an intimate and a general level – you can’t avoid it… It all feeds my work.”

Another memorable exhibition of Wood’s work took place in Bradford, Cartwright Hall in 1988, in a joint exhibition with Gary Woodley. In one of her pieces here, Wood moulded plasticine to the floor and sculptures in the hall to appear as a red slash travelling through the space.

As well as creating her own work, Wood was also a tutor for the foundation course at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, in the late 1980s.

When talking about her own work, Wood emphasised that “I respect the limits of tradition, but believe people should go beyond those limits and marry different art forms.” These beliefs were made clear in her exhibited work and the materials that we so gratefully hold in the archive.

What’s in the collection?

Our archive of Julia Wood consists of five boxes of material, including notebooks, magazine articles, press cuttings, exhibition publicity, photographs, sketches and correspondence.

There are also 35 mm colour slides of her sculptures, and drawings and paperwork relating to her teaching work.