I’m an artist practicing in Naarm (Melbourne). I produce writing, sculpture and sound art through my research into imbalances between notions of form and matter in forming practices. I’ve been writing about and producing process-based spatial and sonic artworks for the last 15 years. These works focus on intersections between embodied listening, queer practices, emotion and formation. I hold a BFA Honours (2007-10) and MFA (2012) from the Victorian College of the Arts; and a PhD from Monash University, Fine Art (2018-22). I am a Teaching Associate at Monash University Fine Art, and also currently co-direct Run Artist Run (with Yongping Ren), a studio residency program in Docklands.

My first essay book ‘Unimposing Form’ will be published in late 2024.

Email: benjaminwds[at]gmail.com


SELECTED CV


EDUCATION

2022
Doctor of Philosophy
, Monash University, Department of Fine Art, Melbourne.

2012
Master of Fine Art
, University of Melbourne, Victorian College of the Arts. 

2010
Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours)
, Sculpture and Spatial Practice, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne.

2009
Bachelor of Fine Art
, Sculpture and Spatial Practice, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne.


PROFESSIONAL ROLES

2020-current
Teaching Associate, Monash University: Art, Design and Architecture, Caulfield. 

2014-2021
Teacher in Sculpture and Studio Practice, Latrobe College of Art and Design, Collingwood.


SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2023
Benthic Community Flutes Sketch 2 (Snapping and Sandy Ghost Shrimp, Swamp Scrub, Mussel)
as part of Figuring Ground curated by Abbra Kotlarcyzk, Grafton Regional Art Gallery, NSW.

2022
Little and Many Intensities
, in Mega-phone Mono-Poly organised by Debris Facility Pty. Ltd., Liquid Architecture, Collingwood Yards.

Forming Resonant Situations: Engaging the Interval in Performance and Installation, PhD exhibition, Monash University MADA Gallery, Caulfield.

2021
Benthic community flutes Sketch 1 (Sandy Ghost Shrimp)
, Study Space, Brunswick.

2020
Leaves, Hope for Resonance
, Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo Japan, 22-26 January.

2018
Beeswax Flutes 2
, in 'Why Listen to Plants?' presented by Liquid Architecture/RMIT Design Hub, curated by Danni Zuvela.

Beeswax Flutes
in Groundwork, curated by Matthew Davis, Living Museum of the West/Melbourne Fringe, Maribyrnong River, September.

2016
Shaking Sculptures in Rooms with a View curated by Emma Collard, The Substation, Newport.

2015
widen, subtract, warm, cool, observe out
, Incinerator Gallery, Garden Space, Moonee Ponds.

that which enables and constrains what can and cannot be done or said
, West Space, Melbourne.

dispersing without fragmenting
, Library at the Docks, Docklands.

2014
exfoliated by the world
, Fort Delta, Melbourne.

2013
goop, turn, sponge, cut, stretch, berry, rain
, in Does it Matter? Kings ARI 10-year exhibition curated by Anabelle Lacroix, Kings Artist Run Initiative.

enfolding outward
, Outward Projects, Launceston.

… salt left by the waves
, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Abbotsford.

2012
becoming becoming open all-around, VCA Master of Fine Art Graduate Exhibition.

open blankets
, City of Melbourne Art Program, Young Artist Grant.

processual rhythms
, The Substation, Newport.


WRITING and PUBLICATIONS BY THE ARTIST

2024
Unimposing Form, essay book (forthcoming).

Uvulah
, hybrid research paper/sonic work for Queer Contexts Conference RMIT November 6-7 (forthcoming).

Excerpts from Wetland Lovers: Found Chance Text Works for Pipemakers Park, research paper/artist pages for Queries Journal #1.

2022

Forming Resonant Situations: Engaging the Interval in Performance and Installation
(PhD publication), Monash University Department of Art.

2016
Intimacy’s Spaces and Times: Bergson’s Spirit in Sculptural Processes, research paper, presented in Philosophy and Creative Practice stream at Australian Continental Philosophical Society annual conference, Deakin University.

2015
Artist Book: Sweet Potato (West Space, 2015), ISBN 978-0-9756242-0-3.

haecceities
, diary entry, Dancehouse Diary Issue 8: Dance and Ethics, Dancehouse.

Website text for Feeling Material (exhibition), c3 Contemporary Art Space.

2013
Feeling Material
, research paper, presented in New Materialism panel convened by Barbara Bolt, AAANZ Annual Conference, VCA.

2012
Becoming Becoming Open All-Around (MFA), VCA University of Melbourne.


SELECTED COLLECTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE WORKS

2023
Lèlè 2 乐乐 2 (Yongping Ren and Ben Woods), Sound and Sculptural Installation, group show Chinese Museum Arts Collective, Testing Grounds, Melbourne.

Lèlè
乐乐 (Yongping Ren and Ben Woods), Performance as part of Temporary Position program, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, May 11.

Tributaries
(with Geoff Robinson, Ying-Lan Dann, Saskia Schut), Open Natures and Open House Melbourne/City of Melbourne Arts Program, and at Run Artist Run.

2022
Tributary Project, with Geoff Robinson, Ying-Lan Dann, Saskia Schut, Composite Moving Image/BUS, Melbourne.

2014
Better. Faster. Stronger. Melbourne Art Fair Project Space with Sarah crowEST, curated by c3 Contemporary Art Space.


SELECTED PERFORMANCE WORKS IN CURATED PROGRAMMES

2024
Sonic response for Anatol Pitt’s exhibition All These Eyes Were Mine at Incinerator Gallery, June 22. Recordings made into EP called Benthic Flutes (Live)

2023
Bubble improvisation
as part of Jessie Bullivant’s ATTACHED 1st birthday party and book launch, Flippy’s Bar.

2022
Glass flutes performance as part of Durational Situation / Monmar (Geoff Robinson) Front Beach Back Beach (November), Point Nepean.

2021
Beeswax flutes
performance in Abbra Kotlarczyk’s exhibition a sonorous draft; a lexicon of windjamming, BLINDSIDE, June-August.

2014
feeling material (second iteration)/A(n) as a way of viewing
in SPECIFIC IN-BETWEEN (the choreographic negotiated in six parts) by Helen Grogan, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

2013
Artist talk
, Critical Animals symposium, with KINGS ARI.


SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023
Hi Spirit, Hi Matter, group show at Watch This Space ARI, Mparntwe, curated by Beth Sometimes.

Figuring Ground
curated by Abbra Kotlarcyzk, Grafton Regional Art Gallery, NSW.

2022
Candles and Sticks, curated by Manon van Kouswijk and Allona Goren, 93 George St, Fitzroy.

2021
Darebin Art Prize (finalist), Bundoora Homestead.

2019
You Are Here (
with Sarah Bunting), curated by Matthew Davis, Living Museum of the West, November.

What does wearing something do?
with Meredith Turnbull, as part of All The Jewellery, RMIT Design Hub, April.

Queer Economies
(as Behn Woods), curated by Abbra Kotlarczyk and Madé Spencer-Castle, Bus Projects/CCP, Jan/Feb.

2017
Visitors, curated by Meredith Turnbull and Manon Van Kouswijk for Radiant Pavilion, at Sarah Scout Presents, August/September.

2015
Form and Flex, curated by Meredith Turnbull, Pieces of Eight.

2014
Dummy
, Mailbox ARI, curated by Made Spencer Castle and Alice Mathieu, Melbourne.

2013
Interpreting variable arrangements
, curated by Jessie Bullivant and Isadora Vaughan, Stockholm, Sweden.


AS CURATOR

2023-current
Run Artist Run, Co-Director (co-founded with Yongping Ren)

2015
Feeling Material (exhibition), c3 Contemporary art Space, Melbourne.


SELECTED RESIDENCIES & MASTERCLASSES/WORKSHOPS

2021
Study Space Residency, Brunswick.
Residency, BLINDSIDE Artist Run.

2019-2020
Artist in Residence, Youkobo Art Space Residency, Japan. 

2018
Melbourne's Living Museum of the West residency.

Diffracting Different and Identity: Masterclass with Karen Barad, hosted by AusSTS.

2017
Performing Arts Forum residency, France. 

Testing Grounds residency, Melbourne.


SELECTED AWARDS, PRIZES, AND GRANTS

2023

City of Melbourne Presentation Grant (Tributaries)

2021-22

City of Melbourne Creative Development Grant (Tributaries)

2021
Darebin Art Prize (Finalist)

2018-2022

Postgraduate Research Stipend (PhD)

2015

Creative Victoria - Presentation and Promotion (for c3 Contemporary Art Space)
Australia Council for the Arts – ArtStart Grant
NAVA Australian Artists’ Grant
Incinerator Gallery Solo Project Commission

2012

City of Melbourne Arts Grant - Young Artist
Friends of the VCA Award

2011-12
Australian Postgraduate Award (MFA)

2010

Harry Curtis Prize

2008

Perrin Sculpture Foundry Award


Publications by other practitioners

2023
Exhibition Catalogue: Figuring Ground (Grafton Regional Gallery, 2023), Curated by Abbra Kotlarczyk
ISBN 978-0-6451014-4-7
Catalogue Design by Adam Woodleigh (Redalfalfa)
Printed by Yoohoo McPhee Print Workshop
This 98-page catalogue was created for the survey exhibition Figuring Ground held at Grafton Regional Gallery, July 1-September 3, 2023.

2017
Research Publication: To Note: Notation Across Disciplines (RMIT Design Hub/Perimeter Books, 2017), Edited by Hannah Mathews 
ISBN 978-0-9953586-1-4
Designed by Žiga Testen and Stuart Geddes
Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group
In December 2015 notation became the focal point of a workshop presented at RMIT Design Hub in Melbourne, entitled To Note: Notation Across Disciplines. It involved 25 practitioners working in and across the disciplines of sound, dance, visual art, and architecture/design. Their lectures, reprinted here in essay form, consider the wider significance, influence, and role of notation across creative fields. Part reference, part exercise manual, this book, edited by Hannah Mathews, is a collection of material that both informs and challenges our understanding of notation and how it exists both historically and currently within and across various fields and disciplines.

Texts by other practitioners

Meredith Turnbull, Jewelry as Excess: Haptic Knowledge and the Artworks of Benjamin Woods, Art Jewelry Forum (2018)

Emily Castle, Nods All Round: Orientations in Recent Spatial Practice in UnMagazine 10.1: Co-Working (2016)

Jeremy Eaton, Review: Feeling Material in UnMagazine 10.1: Co-Working (2016)

Dylan Rainforth, Artists take over florist to create Brunswick Sculpture Centre in The Sydney Morning Herald (Jan 15, 2015)

Pip Wallis, Review: The Melbourne Art Fair, Australia in Ocular (Aug 20, 2014)
Excerpt: ‘The project space by C3 presented Sarah crowEST and Benjamin Woods and was exuberant in its good-humoured riff on art fair props – the desk, the business card, the stock room. A huge desk tilted itself implausibly at one end making it comically unuseful. crowEST’s piles of bubbled wrapped paintings enticed the potential buyer but teased with only the canvas edge visible in a stack of many. A stack of business-like cards, to be taken by visitors offered slippery aphorisms; ‘encountering, not knowing’, ‘very little, almost nothing’, simultaneously particular and vague’. crowEST and Woods’ work was some of the only impolitely uncontained spatial sculpture in the fair and this freeing of form and impulse was a welcome friskiness.’
Dylan Rainforth, Space: Around the Galleries in The Sydney Morning Herald (Oct 23, 2013)

Barbara Bolt, The Athleticism of Imaging: Figuring a Materialist Performativity in ‘On the Verge of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representation‘ (1 ed., pp. 123-140) ARTicle Press (May, 2013)