Alta Forma presents: Benjamin Woods, ‘Wet lines’, 2025
8 -31 May, 2025
Let the seagrass twirl…
Alta Forma is delighted to present ‘Wet lines’ a new solo project by Naarm based artist Ben Woods.
‘Wet lines’ special sonic performance: Saturday 24th of of May at 2pm.
Opening celebration: Saturday 10 May, 3-5pm.
View virtual tour of this exhibition HERE
‘For this project I serendipitously returned to an unfettered joy in the ongoing formation and transformation of materials in sculpture, at the same time as improvising double bass. I engaged in a kind of speculation between a way of improvising sound inspired by Simone Forti, and a way of engaging with sculpture as a sensorial object inspired by Brazilian Modernism, Lygia Clark and her legacies in performative and installation art practice. I wish I could just let the seagrass twirl, but these sculptures suggest otherwise. In response to materials, I hold tensions that cannot be let go. I hope each work sustains a little grace, a little bit of a twirl, while also uncovering some hierarchies of attention. The composer Arvo Pärt’s words sum up my gut feeling and desire for this show when he says: I had a need to focus on every sound, so that every blade of grass would be as important as a flower.’
Performance: Saturday 24th of of May at 2pm. ‘Wet lines’ includes a sonic performance by Ben Woods engaging obliquely with the process of forming the sculptures for this project. The exhibition also launches Alta Forma 2.0. We’ve moved right next door into Suite G06/620, St Kilda Road. ‘Wet lines’ soft opens to the public from 11am Thursday 8th of May.
About ‘Wet lines’:
Turning point, horizontal: I blend some shredded paper and water in a food processor, and it turns to a pasty spew. I let some water drip out, mix in some glue, and bring a bowl of the oatmeal-looking mixture to my desk. I’ve already laid out some thin seagrass twine, and I set out to fastidiously coat the lines of the sea grass with the watery gluey paper pulp. Once covered sufficiently, a corresponding calm arises in me (a satisfaction I’m not proud of), and I set the pulpy wet seagrass lines aside for later. I leave the studio to run other errands, and much later return to find the seagrass has twisted itself into an unlikely range of shapes, knots even, twists and turns that I cannot comprehend or explain. First, I think an intruder has come in and done some sculpture, or some kind of possession is taking place. But, it’s the seagrass remembering water, it’s nothing less than the seagrass remembering 140 million years of wetness.
Turning point, vertical: my algorithm showed me something magical for once apart from muscular bodies and bulges. I immediately searched online for sound clips of electromagnetic chorus waves and listened to their chirping rising tones. I felt the sonic coincidence that can be perceived between the tiny sounds of magnetic waves in Earth’s outer atmosphere and the sounds of dawn and dusk bird, frog and insect choruses. It is as if the birds, insects and amphibians of the wetland choruses are reverberations of these atmospheric magnetic happenings, or vice versa. This coincidence has made me cry. It opened my heart to the cosmic. That’s all. I have played in this coincidence by improvising bass sounds and making sculpture, in awe, breathing in a bit of the grace of connection that it has brought. I’m thinking this might be a culture of the infinite sublime, but I prefer Lygia Clark’s radicalisation of the cosmic for anti-fascist resistance: can that be done? Benjamin Woods, April, 2025
About the artist:
Ben Woods is an artist practicing in Naarm (Melbourne). His improvisational practice works cyclically between sound, sculptural-spatial, and writing processes. The works that he makes focus on intersections between embodied listening and forming practices, including an interest in queer practices, forces of habit, and affect. In this field, Ben tries to locate habit’s openness to change through improvisational forming and sounding practices.
Ben holds a BFA Honours (2007-10) and MFA (2012) from the Victorian College of theArts; and a PhD from Monash University, Fine Art (2018-22). He is a Lecturer at Monash University Fine Art, and also currently co-directs Run ArtistRun (with Yongping Ren), a studio residency space in Docklands. In addition to his solo practice, he also participates in the Tributaries collective and the collaborative project Lèlè. Ben has exhibited extensively in Australia, and once in Sweden and Japan, and undertaken residencies in Australia, France, and Japan. A selection of recent solo works include: Benthic Community Flutes Sketch 2 (Snapping and Sandy Ghost Shrimp, Swamp Scrub, Mussel) premiered as part of Figuring Ground, curated by Abbra Kotlarczyk at Grafton Regional Gallery; Little and Many Intensities and Beeswax Flutes 2 for Liquid Architecture; Leaves (Hope for Resonance) at Youkobo Art Space; Engaging the Interval at MADA Gallery; that which enables and constrains… at West Space which included the publication of the (action) score book titled Sweet Potato; widen, subtract, warm, cool… at Incinerator Art Gallery; Processual Rhythms at The Substation; Enfolding Outward at Outward Projects; Benthic Community Flutes Sketch 1 (Sandy Ghost Shrimp) at Study Space, and as a finalist piece in the Darebin Art Prize; and, Uvulah as part of Queer Contexts Conference, RMIT. Ben has also given performances at ACCA, Incinerator Gallery, Powerhouse Museum, Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West, and more. Concurrent with Wet Lines, Ben’s sculpture theory book Unimposing Form will launch in 15-25 May at the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair 2025, designed by Adam Cruickshank, edited by Abbra Kotlarczyk, and published by True Belief.
Artwork details: 1. Rhizome (detail), 2025, blown glass (2021), seagrass twine, rope, wire, paper pulp, pva, plaster, gesso, acrylic paint; 2. studio detail, 2025;
