Signing Your Life Away

Mind your feet: Subservient Shoe Brush Open Toed Sandals Thing

“Elevator Gallery Informs you that the art works presented by the artist Ben Woodeson throughout the exhibition “Causality” involve a very high degree of risk of injury or death to visitors… The works constitute a severe risk in the following ways: slip, trip, suffocation, cutting, impact, head trauma… which may result in injuries to the limbs, back, head, neck, face, hands, ankles, legs, etc.”

Introducing Ben Woodeson, a sculptor with a complete disregard for his own safety and the safety of his viewers. His show comprises of sculptures from two of bodies of work. The first, Health and Safety Violation Series, will resonate with anyone who has ever come up against the oppressive regime of health and safety all too often instituted in this country’s public spaces. In the past this series has led Woodeson to create a scheme of works that throw safety concerns right back in the face of the lawsuit-conscious institutions where artists exhibit. Gestures have proceeded from the very small and simple, such as overloaded plug sockets, all the way through to the complex and terrifying, including randomly activated tripwires blocking canteen access.

In the current exhibition works from this series include Architectural Garroting Cable and Subservient Shoe Brush Open Toed Sandals Thing. Woodeson’s use of space means that amongst other things, these works provide a great source of amusement as viewers duck under and scuttle over them in order to access other parts of the exhibition.

One Shot Pretty Sculpture: All burnt out.

Other works on show are from The Causality Series, the namesake and theme of the exhibition. These works investigate many of the same concerns and are still very much unsafe to have around. But there is also a new facet that neatly separates them from previous pieces. As the title suggests, they all have a direct, visible action and consequence inherent in their mechanism. In Ball Droppingly Awesome Glass Sculpture there is a pane of glass lying haphazardly on the gallery floor that is smashed by a small metal ball, which falls from ceiling height. One Shot Pretty Sculpture is similarly temporal, but uses matches rather than glass. These randomly activated and usually self-destructive sculptures act more as a performance that leaves a permanent trace in the gallery, than simply a kinetic sculpture. They take time as their subject matter and make a profound statement about the nature of cause and effect.

As the press release points out, The Causality effect means that the “exhibition will continuously evolve, and no two visits will be the same.” You may not necessarily see all or any of the Causality sculptures acting, but you will see a clear remnant of their past action encapsulated by the new state the sculpture finds itself in. Although there is the thrill of danger and institutional critique incorporated into all of the works, a draw in and of itself, I urge you also to look deeper into the fabric of the work to see a more pressing motif that Woodeson hides just beneath the surface.