John Wood & Paul Harrison@woodandharrison

Artist Bio

John Wood (born in 1969 in Hong Kong) and Paul Harrison (born in 1966 in Wolverhampton, England) both studied at the Bath College of Higher Education. They have been working together since 1993.

Wood and Harrison create video works of minimalist performances, touching on themes of tragedy, comedy and irony. They are experiments in the physical limitations, scale and movement of the human body in relation to the surrounding environment, which has usually been constructed by the artists.

Wood and Harrison have exhibited their work extensively internationally. Recent exhibitions include Some Words, Some More Words, IKON Gallery, Birmingham travelling to Musée Departmental d’Art Contemporain, Rochechouart and Kunstmuseum; ThunStudio Trisorio, Rome and Naples, 2009; MAM Project 005, Mori Art Museum,Tokyo, Japan, 2007; Art Now, Lightbox, Tate Britain, London; Selected Works, MOMA, Queens, New York, 2004. Group shows include Le Mouvement des Images, Musee d’Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2006; Twenty Six (Drawing and Falling Things), Carnegie Museum Pittsburgh, 2005; the British Art Show 5, 2000.

Artist Statement

John Wood and Paul Harrison make things that move and things that don’t, things that are flat and things that are not, things that are mildly amusing and things that are definitely not.

They make works that form a kind of reference manual for how to do, make, build, or draw things that you probably never want to do, make, build, or draw. They do it for you. Even though you don’t need them to.

This attempt to compile an encyclopaedia of the everyday, started in 1993 after they met at art college.