Wilfrid Wood
Bio
Wilfrid Wood is a satirical sculptor.
After dumping a career in graphics, Wilfrid plunged into model making and sculpture at cult classic British television show, Spitting Image. Here he learnt his trade as an 'apprentice headbuilder'. Now he makes heads and figures entirely by hand. They are of famous people, invented characters and friends.
Wilfrid's fascination with people and the belief that 'nature is much more interesting than your imagination', means he spends a lot of time studying characters he sees in the supermarket, on the bus and in celebrity magazines.
He's inspired by asymmetrical faces, fat bodies, beautiful bodies, hairy bodies, The Uncanny, doggies, fashion, self‑taught artists, contortionists, freaks, sport, tongues and gender fluid internet exhibitionists. Wilfrid lives and works in Hackney, East London.
The sculptures are initially sketched before being fleshed out as quickly made maquettes. He then takes them further in cheap materials like polymer clay and papier máché. Finally they are airbrushed and varnished to an immaculate level of finish.
At the moment he's using plasticine for a series of heads called Plasticine Models featuring actual fashion models and people who think they are models.
Occasionally he gets a commission but most of the time he produces sculptures for his own entertainment which end up on social media and sold in galleries.
Session
Heads
Human heads are perhaps the most universal subject in art, but also the most interesting. We are uniquely sensitive to faces; we can't help but make judgements about the person inside from the arrangement of features on the outside.
It is impossible to see a face as an object, just as it's impossible to see a word without reading it. A portrait sculptor is not pushing around some abstract pile of geometric forms trying to get feeling out of them.
They are dealing with eyes and mouths and noses, things with which we all have a primal connection.
