Matrix by Grace Wood
curated by Josephine Mead
March 25 - April 19, 2026
Gasworks Creative Precinct
curated by Josephine Mead
March 25 - April 19, 2026
Gasworks Creative Precinct
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Images: Installation view: 'Matrix' - an exhibition by Grace Wood at Gasworks Creative Precinct, 2026. Images courtesy of Gasworks.
MOTHER-IMAGE
In printmaking, a “mother image” or matrix refers to the original, master surface from which prints are produced. Grace Wood’s practice and self relate to the idea of the matrix. She has built an extensive digital archive of historical and contemporary found images and personal and familial photographs. This archive is consistently mined to create collage-based work resulting in photographic prints, textiles, and installation. Wood is also currently a mother to two young children. She is matrix—as maternal entity, and as image source— the master surface from which her collages are born.
Through drawing together disparate images, she creates new fictions that explore past and forming histories. Elusive memories come through--memories that have become more personal in recent years, as she has investigated her role as mother; the legacy of her grandmother; and enduring concepts of birth and renewal. These themes have called to the domestic. Craft practices, such as sewing, beading and applique, have entered Wood’s practice. The images become a ground for adornment. By placing images together, she produces new prints, from past source. Matrix has presented an opportunity for Wood to pick up past works, reconfigure them, and present them anew.
Two works that rely heavily on art historical sources are An exploded view (grid) (2025-26) and in Precious things, too (2026). For An exploded view (grid), Wood has printed a digital collage on linen, made up of visual fragments from disparate sources. A fragment of Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Hat (1905) – sans face – blurs into photographs of fabric dye swatches; delicate flowers hold up a bronze statue and the lines of a distorted painting thread through. Scattered and reassembled, the images move between gesture and stillness, colour and motion, surface and thread. Fragments of other notable works, almost indistinguishable in this context, include Der schwarze Phoenix (The Black Phoenix) by Markus Lüpertz (1983), View of Notre-Dame by Henri Matisse (1914), and Flower Arrangement by Caroline Peebles (c.1870). The work is further embellished with found beads in a grid formation, softening the digital image into something tactile and three dimensional. Wood is interested in how collage can hold the fluidity of memory, how images migrate and repeat, and how new meanings can be found in the folds between the photographic, the painterly, and the woven.
Precious things, too (2026) presents a conglomeration of images, that are both clear and half-forgotten memories. The top left image shows a Roman garden fresco from the House of the Golden Bracelet in Pompeii, depicting a lush garden. It dates to the 1st century CE, likely created between 30 and 35 AD. Wood has added a 6x4 film photograph she took approximately eighteen years ago. She doesn't remember what it depicts. On top of the film photograph is a tiny self-portrait, hand printed in the colour darkroom while Wood was studying twelve years ago. Wood explains, “I'm floating inside this 6x4 image in the same way the heads are floating in the sky in the Pompeii painting.” The bottom right image is a photograph Wood's grandmother took of a stick insect sitting on a deck chair. Above this, a small gold object. Wood can't remember exactly where it came from. These assembled images and objects sit atop a piece of brown fabric from a past creation. This work can be seen as a visual explanation of how Wood works – piecing together many parts and many memories, examining both her personal experiences and wider visual histories. Both images and memory are slippery devices, never fully fixed.
Blue Magnolias ft. Effexor (scrunch) (2026) carries on from the above, drawing many parts together. Wood has attached a silk print onto an image, documenting a sand sculpture she found in Japan. She has painted over sections of the image underneath. The print is drawn to the side, held in place to replicate a drawn curtain. This gesture acts as a suggestion for the viewer to question how fixed the meanings of the images we consume are. Underneath, fabric and sky are visible. By losing parts of images, the materiality behind Wood’s assemblages comes through. On the silk print stands a figure of a woman—the most dominant visual form of the work. Images of women repeat through Wood's practice in quiet acts of resistance and resolve. Wood’s practice originates from and returns to ongoing feminist narratives.
Images of Venus have been a consistent visual thread, feminist aggravator, and representation of the feminine in Wood’s work. For Venus with beads (2026), she has printed a found image of Venus onto fabric and overlaid the image with thousands of 3mm coloured glass beads. Venus is often used to symbolize fertility. Venus figurines have been found across Europe and parts of Asia since 40,000 BCE. The term 'Venus’ is metaphorical, often inspired by the Roman goddess of beauty. Through the replication of this form in her work, Wood is challenging our cultural assumptions of what a woman can be—especially when torn between maternal matters and the outside world. Venus with pom poms (2026) carries on from this—made as an action to reclaim objects and images from the male hand/gaze. The work references Venus de Milo with Draws (1936), a well-known Surrealist sculpture by Salvidor Dalí that features the ancient Greek statue adorned with functional drawers and mink pom-poms. Influenced by Freud, Dalí added knobs made of white ermine pom-poms to drawers on the figure's forehead, breasts, stomach, and knees. As a male artist, this action of adorning and constraining a female figure carries with it suggestions of harm. By creating her own version of an adorned Venus, Wood reclaims and softens this action, reframing it, giving order to the process, and embellishing with care.
In recent years, Wood's practice has become fixated on the botanical. This sense of blooming coincided with her entry into motherhood. Bush scene (2021) – a full digital collage of botanical images and scenes – interrogates nature and our relationship to it. Appearing in the work is a reproduced image of Reclining Woman with Black Cat by Stephen Pace (1965). Wood has replaced the head of the painting with a sculpture by Markus Lüpertz. This sense of repositioning representations of humanity, while bringing to the fore nature's abundance, suggests we are powerless to the natural forces of this world. The greens of the natural world carry on in Tread Lightly (2026)—an assemblage of found images presenting references to art history, gardens and pop-culture. Originally made in 2021, Wood has created a new iteration of the work by attaching green pom poms—another attempt by Wood to charge a work with a gesture of feminist resistance—pushing against the male association that pom poms have historically carried.
Coming from and returning to her ever-growing archive of images, Wood continues to challenge what a matrix is through acts of return and recontextualization. It is hard to ever pinpoint the place of a source image in Wood’s practice. Relating to the multifarious nature of mothers, one realizes that the sources behind a mother-image are influx and adaptable, stretching across boundaries, time periods, art histories and personal experience.
— Josephine Mead
MOTHER-IMAGE
In printmaking, a “mother image” or matrix refers to the original, master surface from which prints are produced. Grace Wood’s practice and self relate to the idea of the matrix. She has built an extensive digital archive of historical and contemporary found images and personal and familial photographs. This archive is consistently mined to create collage-based work resulting in photographic prints, textiles, and installation. Wood is also currently a mother to two young children. She is matrix—as maternal entity, and as image source— the master surface from which her collages are born.
Through drawing together disparate images, she creates new fictions that explore past and forming histories. Elusive memories come through--memories that have become more personal in recent years, as she has investigated her role as mother; the legacy of her grandmother; and enduring concepts of birth and renewal. These themes have called to the domestic. Craft practices, such as sewing, beading and applique, have entered Wood’s practice. The images become a ground for adornment. By placing images together, she produces new prints, from past source. Matrix has presented an opportunity for Wood to pick up past works, reconfigure them, and present them anew.
Two works that rely heavily on art historical sources are An exploded view (grid) (2025-26) and in Precious things, too (2026). For An exploded view (grid), Wood has printed a digital collage on linen, made up of visual fragments from disparate sources. A fragment of Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Hat (1905) – sans face – blurs into photographs of fabric dye swatches; delicate flowers hold up a bronze statue and the lines of a distorted painting thread through. Scattered and reassembled, the images move between gesture and stillness, colour and motion, surface and thread. Fragments of other notable works, almost indistinguishable in this context, include Der schwarze Phoenix (The Black Phoenix) by Markus Lüpertz (1983), View of Notre-Dame by Henri Matisse (1914), and Flower Arrangement by Caroline Peebles (c.1870). The work is further embellished with found beads in a grid formation, softening the digital image into something tactile and three dimensional. Wood is interested in how collage can hold the fluidity of memory, how images migrate and repeat, and how new meanings can be found in the folds between the photographic, the painterly, and the woven.
Precious things, too (2026) presents a conglomeration of images, that are both clear and half-forgotten memories. The top left image shows a Roman garden fresco from the House of the Golden Bracelet in Pompeii, depicting a lush garden. It dates to the 1st century CE, likely created between 30 and 35 AD. Wood has added a 6x4 film photograph she took approximately eighteen years ago. She doesn't remember what it depicts. On top of the film photograph is a tiny self-portrait, hand printed in the colour darkroom while Wood was studying twelve years ago. Wood explains, “I'm floating inside this 6x4 image in the same way the heads are floating in the sky in the Pompeii painting.” The bottom right image is a photograph Wood's grandmother took of a stick insect sitting on a deck chair. Above this, a small gold object. Wood can't remember exactly where it came from. These assembled images and objects sit atop a piece of brown fabric from a past creation. This work can be seen as a visual explanation of how Wood works – piecing together many parts and many memories, examining both her personal experiences and wider visual histories. Both images and memory are slippery devices, never fully fixed.
Blue Magnolias ft. Effexor (scrunch) (2026) carries on from the above, drawing many parts together. Wood has attached a silk print onto an image, documenting a sand sculpture she found in Japan. She has painted over sections of the image underneath. The print is drawn to the side, held in place to replicate a drawn curtain. This gesture acts as a suggestion for the viewer to question how fixed the meanings of the images we consume are. Underneath, fabric and sky are visible. By losing parts of images, the materiality behind Wood’s assemblages comes through. On the silk print stands a figure of a woman—the most dominant visual form of the work. Images of women repeat through Wood's practice in quiet acts of resistance and resolve. Wood’s practice originates from and returns to ongoing feminist narratives.
Images of Venus have been a consistent visual thread, feminist aggravator, and representation of the feminine in Wood’s work. For Venus with beads (2026), she has printed a found image of Venus onto fabric and overlaid the image with thousands of 3mm coloured glass beads. Venus is often used to symbolize fertility. Venus figurines have been found across Europe and parts of Asia since 40,000 BCE. The term 'Venus’ is metaphorical, often inspired by the Roman goddess of beauty. Through the replication of this form in her work, Wood is challenging our cultural assumptions of what a woman can be—especially when torn between maternal matters and the outside world. Venus with pom poms (2026) carries on from this—made as an action to reclaim objects and images from the male hand/gaze. The work references Venus de Milo with Draws (1936), a well-known Surrealist sculpture by Salvidor Dalí that features the ancient Greek statue adorned with functional drawers and mink pom-poms. Influenced by Freud, Dalí added knobs made of white ermine pom-poms to drawers on the figure's forehead, breasts, stomach, and knees. As a male artist, this action of adorning and constraining a female figure carries with it suggestions of harm. By creating her own version of an adorned Venus, Wood reclaims and softens this action, reframing it, giving order to the process, and embellishing with care.
In recent years, Wood's practice has become fixated on the botanical. This sense of blooming coincided with her entry into motherhood. Bush scene (2021) – a full digital collage of botanical images and scenes – interrogates nature and our relationship to it. Appearing in the work is a reproduced image of Reclining Woman with Black Cat by Stephen Pace (1965). Wood has replaced the head of the painting with a sculpture by Markus Lüpertz. This sense of repositioning representations of humanity, while bringing to the fore nature's abundance, suggests we are powerless to the natural forces of this world. The greens of the natural world carry on in Tread Lightly (2026)—an assemblage of found images presenting references to art history, gardens and pop-culture. Originally made in 2021, Wood has created a new iteration of the work by attaching green pom poms—another attempt by Wood to charge a work with a gesture of feminist resistance—pushing against the male association that pom poms have historically carried.
Coming from and returning to her ever-growing archive of images, Wood continues to challenge what a matrix is through acts of return and recontextualization. It is hard to ever pinpoint the place of a source image in Wood’s practice. Relating to the multifarious nature of mothers, one realizes that the sources behind a mother-image are influx and adaptable, stretching across boundaries, time periods, art histories and personal experience.
— Josephine Mead
