MYTHOLOGY
Created between 1997 and 2004, MYTHOLOGY marks an important development in Neil Wood’s exploration of photography, language and the symbolic potential of found objects. Produced without the use of a camera, each work originates from a highly detailed digital extraction of a discarded object. Through enlargement, isolation and careful composition, these fragments are transformed into images that oscillate between recognition and ambiguity.
Presented with accompanying nameplates and displayed with the authority of museum specimens or ritual artefacts, the works invite viewers to search for meaning in forms that are simultaneously familiar and elusive. From a distance they appear precious, even sacred. Closer inspection reveals a collision of mundane materials, industrial debris and accidental assemblages.
Drawing equally upon archaeology, natural history collections, Surrealism, Dada and contemporary image culture, MYTHOLOGY examines the mechanisms through which objects become symbols and symbols become cultural myths. The project proposes that mythical status is not an inherent quality but a social and linguistic construction, dependent upon naming, display, belief and repetition.
At its heart lies a simple but far-reaching question: what transforms an object into a symbol? By disrupting conventional distinctions between the natural and the artificial, the valuable and the worthless, the ancient and the contemporary, MYTHOLOGY exposes the fragile relationship between material reality and the stories we project onto it.