Editing Bill Woodrow (section)

==Artistic career==
[[File:Sitting on History (1995) by Bill Woodrow, British Library, London, UK - 20061031.jpg|thumb|left|Woodrow's ''Sitting on History'' (1995) was purchased for the [[British Library]] by [[Carl Djerassi]] and [[Diane Middlebrook]] in 1997. The sculpture, with its [[ball and chain]], refers to the book as the captor of information from which we cannot escape.]]
Woodrow was one of a number of British sculptors to emerge in the late 1970s on to the international contemporary art scene, together with fellow artists like [[Richard Deacon (sculptor)|Richard Deacon]] and [[Tony Cragg]].<ref name="Ina Cole">{{cite book |editor1-last=Cole |editor-first1=Ina |title=From the Sculptor’s Studio: Conversations with Twenty Seminal Artists |year=2021 |publisher=Laurence King Publishing Ltd |page=270-283|isbn=9781913947590 |oclc=1420954826}}</ref> Materials found in dumps, used car lots and scrap yards formed the raw materials for his early works; by partly embedding them in plaster, he made them seem as if they had been excavated. Subsequently, he turned to large consumer goods like cars and refrigerators. While their original structures could still be discerned, he cut portions out of them and reattached the portions to the main structures so that they appeared to be connected through [[umbilical cord]]s. He held his first solo exhibition at [[Whitechapel Art Gallery]] in London in 1972.<ref name="CSF"/>

Woodrow's works often featured a narrative element, and in the 1990s when he began to make work in bronze, stories remained an important element of his sculptures. A seminal work was ''In Awe of the Pawnbroker'' (1994), in which the meaning of the pawnbroker's symbol was unravelled. This sculpture has a number of elements that add up to what is virtually an installation. One of three artists selected to make a sculpture for the [[Fourth plinth, Trafalgar Square|Fourth Plinth]] in [[Trafalgar Square]], London, in 2000, Woodrow chose to explore a recurring theme in his work&nbsp;– the destruction of the planet and the insistent strength of nature over man&nbsp;– in the piece entitled ''Regardless of History''.<ref name="CSF"/><ref name="Ina Cole">{{cite book |editor1-last=Cole |editor-first1=Ina |title=From the Sculptor’s Studio: Conversations with Twenty Seminal Artists |year=2021 |publisher=Laurence King Publishing Ltd |page=270-283|isbn=9781913947590 |oclc=1420954826}}</ref>