By Bhavani Esapathi Satyanranjanraju

When I first encountered Alistair’s works it was strikingly apparent to me that he was meddling with paradoxes, playing, flirting & enticing viewers to decode this special language he had built from his practice.
‘Do it Yourself’ was the attitude he pushes for but this question begs the answer do WHAT yourself and what is BEING subjected to change? Of course I’m aware the answers are just more questions, I told you he was playing with paradoxes.

Let’s look at where he’s making the work that might shed some light on what’s being done – ‘I feel that both traditional and non-traditional environment benefit this type of work but for different reasons!’ says Alistair. He goes on to emphasise on the importance of hanging scrap materials in a traditional environment. I thought that sums up his practice rather well – bringing together scraps of wood, railway sleepers and anything else you’d imagine and attempting to display it in art spaces. It does make sense indeed to exhibit in Basement as BasementArtsProject isn’t a gallery space, neither is it an art space – it’s a space that is partial to art and that’s what makes this relationship interesting.

For the benefit of most of us who do not ordinarily play with paradoxes in our everyday lives I’d probably ascribe to the Liverpool poet and painter Adrian Henri’s understanding of environment as ‘happenings’. Because much of his work derives from remnants of various subcultures that Alistair does not visibly distinguish maybe we can separate them as materials over ideas or ideas over materials? A false nostalgia that is a testament to happenings of the past, present and future to come.

Wood is a material that reoccurs in much of his work, timeless in nature yet changing through time it’s the perfect accompaniment for Woods’ paradox! There is a sense of false nostalgia in wood I must admit, it ages with time much like living organisms yet remains enduring, endearing even stubbornly refusing to be anything but.

“When I was about 14 I got given a bag of old film cameras from a man who was replacing his cameras for digital cameras” and Alistair hasn’t stopped working with hand-me-down materials since. One can see them as hand-me-downs but they are much more interesting when you realise hand-me-downs come with a history, a personal contagious resonance that they continue to spread.

He leads us to believe that his practice is about bringing together traditional elements to form a piece paradoxically he’s transforming these conventional objects into a modern day collage. So what is being subjected to change? It’s the being itself! The pattern of representation of wood, old photographs or any other objects he might pick up on his travels.

It’s changed, its being changed and ‘what’ his practice calls for is to aid in the transformation of these works. Where is the paradox? The works that remain the same while being infinitely transformed with every glance. ‘Do-it-yourself’ he says, even to his viewers – look at the work and bring it alive as the nostalgia of the works intertwines with your own creating, well, a very real false nostalgia?
(This text was produced as a piece that overlooks the dialogue facilitated via Twitter chat #S2C between Alistair Woods’ and fellow tweeters early May 2014)

Bhavani Esapathi | May 2014