Richard Woods
Cartoon houses – a recognisable representation
“I am highlighting and exaggerating this process of gentrification.”
Richard Woods uses installations in cartoon colours to satirise the housing crisis. Leaning on his previous career as a builder, the artist transforms everyday surfaces into playful and exaggerated cartoon versions. This process involves overlapping objects with statement, painted-on textures. Much of this is done through woodblock printing, using household gloss paint and 3mm MDF boards. He has likened his bright palette to the plastic-like colours of his parents' garish 1970s decor. Often executed on his studio floor, he creates graphic textures such as bricks, stones and wood grain. Despite...
Richard Woods uses installations in cartoon colours to satirise the housing crisis. Leaning on his previous career as a builder, the artist transforms everyday surfaces into playful and exaggerated cartoon versions. This process involves overlapping objects with statement, painted-on textures. Much of this is done through woodblock printing, using household gloss paint and 3mm MDF boards. He has likened his bright palette to the plastic-like colours of his parents' garish 1970s decor. Often executed on his studio floor, he creates graphic textures such as bricks, stones and wood grain. Despite being known for architectural installations, Woods views his work “in terms of surfaces” rather than sculpting.
Through his installations, Woods highlights the housing crisis, multiple-home ownership and gentrification. By emblazoning building structures in his iconic cartoon style, Woods satirises the very idea of house ownership as an unreachable, animated fantasy. Removed from reality, they have no real windows, no glass, no accessible front doors. There is, “nothing else that would lead the viewer to think they could live in it.” They exist in a dreamlike state, outside of numerous people’s grasp.
Richard Woods (he/him) was born in 1966 in Chester, England. He now lives and works in London.
In his youth, Woods would drag raw materials from skips to produce his works. He called it a form of ‘urban recycling’. He now buys his materials from building merchants and timber yards.
In 2010, Woods was invited to transform part of Cary Grant’s previous Hollywood home for the new owner, art dealer Jeffrey Deitch. He created a party room, clad in bright blue wood-grain effect panels.
