Benjamin Woods
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Image: BW at Whanganui River for study of Te Awa Tupua in 2017.
Benjamin Woods is an artist practicing in Naarm (Melbourne). His process-based multi-disciplinary practice works cyclically between sound, sculptural-spatial, and writing practices. The works that he makes focus on intersections between embodied listening and forming practices. In this field, Ben explores habit’s relationship to emotion and openness to change through improvisational forming and sounding practices. His research spans investigations of cultural and social formation accessed through instrument building and process-based sculpture, place-based material politics, and creative practice pedagogy.
 

Woods’s recent text book Unimposing Form is avaliable to buy from publisher True Belief.

Ben holds 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). He is a Lecturer at Monash University Fine Art, and currently co-directs Run Artist Run (with Yongping Ren), a studio residency space in Docklands.

In addition to his solo practice, he also participates in Tributaries collective and the collaborative project Lèlè.

Ben has exhibited extensively in Australia, and once in Sweden and Japan; and he has undertaken residencies in Australia, France, and Japan. A selection of recent solo works, exhibitions, performances and presentations include: Benthic Community Flutes Sketch 2 (Snapping and Sandy Ghost Shrimp, Swamp Scrub, Mussel) premiered as part of Figuring Ground, curated by Abbra Kotlarczyk at Grafton Regional Gallery; Little and Many Intensities and Beeswax Flutes 2 for Liquid Architecture; Leaves (Hope for Resonance) at Youkobo Art Space; Engaging the Interval at MADA Gallery; that which enables and constrains… at West Space which included the publication of the (action) score book titled Sweet Potato; widen, subtract, warm, cool… at Incinerator Art Gallery; Processual Rhythms at The Substation; Enfolding Outward at Outward Projects; Benthic Community Flutes Sketch 1 (Sandy Ghost Shrimp) at Study Space, and as a finalist piece in the Darebin Art Prize; and, Uvulah as part of Queer Contexts Conference, RMIT. Ben has also given performances at ACCA, Incinerator Gallery, Powerhouse Museum, Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West, and more. Concurrent with his most recent solo exhibition Wet Lines at Alta Forma, Ben’s sculpture theory book Unimposing Form launched in May at the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair 2025, designed by Adam Cruickshank, edited by Abbra Kotlarczyk, and published by True Belief. Most recently, Ben presented Wind Throb: a two-part instrument building workshop and group sharing at Conduction in Footscray.

CV

Image: Benjamin Woods, Shades, action sculpture, plywood and house paint, Melbourne Art Fair (with c3 and Sarah crowEST), 2014.

Image: Benjamin Woods, Beeswax Flutes, 2017.