Augusta Wood
'Double Couch (1998, 2003, 2008)' ( 2013 )
14 x 14 inches, chromogenic print
3 editions on sale (6/10, 7/10, 8/10)
Price: $300
Some Things So Far, 2008/2014
I speak into the shadows
first quietly to myself and outward
(Helen is knocking around upstairs, there are voices in her head).
Silence balloons something to push against,
any sound is pointed and clear
echoes in 52 degrees yet
with floor to ceiling glass in autumn
the light is bright during the day.
There is nothing here save the telephone
and answering machine where I sleep
on the floor by the day.
When I wake up to photograph
these empty rooms
dark is falling fast from blue,
yes,
the slide projector fans hum kind white noise
keeping me company and now
pictures illuminate the walls, and through ground glass
it feels familiar once more,
light, coming back.
-Augusta Wood
Augusta Wood’s text and limited edition are excerpts from her project I have only what I remember, which deals with the influence of architectural space and photographic images. Her process for this work involves arranging many slide projections throughout the interior of the empty modernist home in upstate New York that her grandparents built in 1955. The work uses the architecture, photographic remnants of childhood and family, and images of her grandparents’ ingenious but eclectic art collection to make a genealogical vision. The enormous slide archive Augusta is drawing from and adding to traces the role of art, architecture, photography, and memory on multiple levels.
Wood has a forthcoming book of the same title, designed with renowned Los Angeles-based graphic designer Gail Swanlund. It includes 26 color plates, an essay by Rebecca Morse, Associate Curator in the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and an interview on the architectural history of the house with Augusta’s father, architect Jeremy Scott Wood. The book is hardcover, in an edition of 500, and will be released in April of 2014 in conjunction with her second solo exhibition at Angles Gallery in Los Angeles. Wood is currently raising money to self-publish this book. Part of the proceeds of our limited edition sales will go toward the printing of this publication.
Augusta Wood's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Cherry and Martin (Los Angeles) and Angles Gallery (Los Angeles), and has been featured in exhibitions at Anton Kern Gallery (New York), Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA), the Fotofest 2010 Biennial (Houston, TX), among others. Wood’s work has been written about in the Los Angeles Times, Modern Painters, Art Lies Contemporary Art Quarterly, The Huffington Post, and has appeared in Water~Stone Review and on the cover of Black Clock. Her photographs are included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She earned her BFA from The Cooper Union, her MFA from CalArts, and is represented by Angles Gallery in Los Angeles.