Terminal

Solo exhibition 'Terminal' by British artist Lucy Wood at Upstream Gallery. Wood often deals with the global phenomenon of migration and people trafficking.

Artist statement:
My practice uses different circumstances of entrapment that we perceive as freedom in the West. I use individual and group situationism to provide contemporary illustrations of the traps that we constantly live along side. I produce mentally seductive traps which physically lure the audience and situational installations and objects that rise questions on the veil of suggested freedom and liberation.

My work has often encompassed issues of denial and social exclusion such as toys, games and gymnasium equipment whose function has been forfeited due to the inclusion of glass in critically physically engaging parts.

Over the last two years I have made a series of human scale traps based on small Victorian animal traps, like 'Gin' and 'Rat' traps. Produced in mirror polished stainless and mild steel, the traps are fully operational with enlarged spring systems. A real danger is presented to the safety of the viewer.

I ask the viewer to engage with these shiny enticing objects. But to become too familiar would cause serious risk, so the pieces remain untouched, imbued with a feeling of superiority in their make up. The viewer is left feeling alienated, in suspense at the capabilities of the pieces abilities. The traps are harnessed within themselves as objects, until human intervention turns them into questions for the audience about their own vulnerability and fragility.