Mark Woods: Formula + Fetish

Featuring a range of media, including sculpture, installation, photography and jewellery making, this is the first monograph on the work of British artist Mark Woods.

Woods (born 1961 in Surrey, UK) is an artist with a background in contemporary jewellery production and boat building. He produces elaborate artefacts that blur the boundaries between jewellery, fine art, fetish objects and items from cabinets of curiosities. Unnerving and evocative, the viewer is confronted with exquisite beauty, sophisticated craftsmanship and an awakening of unexpected emotions. Woods's works invites the viewer to leave their comfort zone and question human desires.

Formula + Fetish explores four aspects of his practice: "Objects" - luxurious objects of desire and contemporary art fetishes; “Staged Self-Portraits” – a performance with the camera lens; “Creative Images” – a joining of objects; and “Jewellery” – the origins of the artist’s skills in object making.

Alongside visually striking photography, documenting his key exhibitions, the book includes critical essays by leading art writers Paul Carey-Kent, Michael Petry and Peter Suchin, who offer individual and sometimes contradicting responses to Woods’s world of objects and imagery.