Exhibitions

This exhibition of new ceramic sculptures for water, sound and light by Benjamin Woods speculates on the sound-world and material textures surrounding the sandy ghost shrimp as a poetic way of centering marginal queer lives.

Known locally as bass yabbies, or one-armed bandits, the ghost shrimp that live in the intertidal sandy flats of Millowl Phillip Island are famously sought after fishing bait. Woods takes a different interest in them, inspired by the complex burrow systems that they sculpt to eat, mate, and protect themselves. The shrimp experience the world through a series of holes. They become a hidden figure absorbed in the noise around them: the constant crunchy whirling of the burrowing soldier crabs, the shore birds and other predators threatening from above, imbibing traces of radium in the muddy runoff from town.

Making this work has been a process of revealing a mutual position for the artist and shrimp. The possibility for queer lives to thrive is entangled with the survival of endangered ecologies, the same attitudes threaten us both. The 1% know little about the sheer joy of the bottom-dweller. Bottom-dwellers make the ground, one ball of sandy mud at a time.

Artist Bio:
Benjamin Woods is an interdisciplinary artist based in Naarm Melbourne. He has an improvisational practice that encompasses sound, sculpture, and writing. Woods studied at Victorian College of the Arts and later completed a PhD in Fine Art at Monash University, where he is now a Lecturer.

Alongside his own art practice, Woods is co-director of Run Artist Run, an artist-led studio residency space in Docklands. Woods has presented his work at alternative spaces and galleries including: Conduction, Alta Forma, Liquid Architecture, West Space, Incinerator Gallery, and Grafton Regional Gallery. He is a member of Climate Aware Creative Practice research group (CACP), and the Australasian Queer Research Network (AQuRN).

Image: Benjamin Woods