Christopher Wool at Gagosian, Grovenor Hill, London / Happy New Year

All Images: Christopher Wool, Gagosian, Grovenor Hill, London December 2025

Over a number of years, New Year's celebrations tended to pass me by somewhat. I had developed the small personal tradition of seeing in the new year in reflective mood, ideally with a paintbrush and a glass of something in hand. Last year broke that trend, and it seems that this year, I will again be out and about in company as the calendar clicks over. So, instead of self-indulgently ruminating on my own 'progress' or aspirations, I'll make this last post of 2025 a  celebration of my last exhibition experience of the year. As it transpires, Christopher Wool's recent show of works on paper and related sculptures turned out to be one of the most uplifting things I've seen in a long time.

I've long been a big fan of Wool's work, across the span of his career - from the early repeat patterns and painted texts, through the more painterly mid-period smears and stains, and into the ever-evolving tangles and movements towards 3D of his current 'grand old man' years. I find visual and intellectual nourishment in it all, to be honest, and consider him amongst the most engaging of those artists who prolong the relevance of centuries-old media, even as they are  pushed back and forth through the reproduction and translation technologies of the mechanical/digital era. That productive tension between analogue and the technologically mediated realms, and between the improvisational 'in the moment' experience, and the fixed but  infinitely tradable 'memory', continue to be key preoccupations in my own work.

However, beyond any of that (and above all), the show at Gagosian turned out to be a sheer sensory delight. Be it in the form of paper-based wall pieces, or mechanically-enlarged found wire tangles, Wool's language of scribbles, smears, stains, painterly gestures, printer's dots and occasional text fragments just went on mining limitless variation - often from the simplest of sources. Complexity out of minimal origins, calligraphic spontaneity, the tactility of fluid media, the chance effects of layering, the sheer delight of one thing partially glimpsed through the matrix of another, a determination to wring the maximum potential from the humblest or  disregarded gifts the world can offer - all these things (and more) are in full effect in his work, it appears.

The show in London was actually a relatively modest variation on a larger exhibit, entitled 'See, Stop Run', which Wool installed in a disused and dilapidated New York office space in 2024. The remainder of this cycle of work has found a longer-term home in Marfa, Texas, apparently. As the stunning publication from the  Manhattan show attests, the dialogue between work and context, and the material, visual and textural effects thereby generated, must have been endlessly stimulating. Urban resonances? - I should say so! That show immediately joins the list of 'things I wish I'd seen', but regrets will get us nowhere (and the prospect of a journey into the Trumpian hellscape doesn't really appeal, for obvious reasons). As it was, the stripped-down, pure-white cubicle version of Wool on offer in London, still provided an experience that continued to excite, even after a couple of hours of intensive immersion. It was only eye strain, aching legs and the need to find a publicly-accessible toilet (come on, Gagosian - surely that's not too much to ask!), that eventually dragged me away. 

Incredibly, even this opportunity might have easily passed me by. Having already been down in London for some other exhibitions a few weeks previously, it was purely by chance that I'd retrospectively noticed Wool was on show just a few hundred metres from where I'd been that day. For all of Gagosian's status within the high-end international art world, its Grovenor Hill site just isn't a location you walk past by chance, it seems. Knowing that opportunities to see a collection of his work over here don't come around too often, I hastily cleared another Saturday in the diary, organised more coach tickets, and braved torrential rain (and a few other logistical complications) to make it there before the show ended, just prior to the descent into full-on Christmapalypse. Regrets? - I'm sure the eulogy above will tell you I have none.

It's gratifying to be able to end the year with a report of something genuinely uplifting, even as it sneaked-in under the wire of 2025. Indeed, this wasn't just a cultural high water mark of my year, but one of the most memorable of the last decade. It's just a shame I can't use this slightly-delayed post as a prompt for others to also visit, but perhaps my photos can offer some pale impression of what I enjoyed. 

On that note: Happy New Year, one and all. Clearly, the good stuff's still out there, if we look hard enough.

Still composed [shamelessly] without A.I., in 2025.

'Show Me The Way To Go Home...'

First Three Images:  West Leicester, July 2019

These images seem pretty typical of the kind of thing one might take on a nocturnal stagger home - after taking a little drink, and therefore convincing oneself that the subjects illuminated by the phone's flash have some sudden and profound significance.  Which is exactly what they are.

They differ from the photographs I normally take, being both nocturnal, and spontaneously 'snatched' (although I'll confess to a little post-camera editing here - which somewhat redresses the latter quality).  They were also taken on my phone - which is a tool I have often tended to under-utilise for image capture.  That does seem to be changing slightly though, now that I've admitted a little more social media into my life - and become an occasional exponent of Instagram.  I don't plan to start photographing my dinner anytime soon, and still remain a bit reluctant to put my own image online, unless strictly necessary.  However, aside from their standard publicity functions, there is a certain appeal to the idea of using such platforms as a kind of spontaneous visual diary - I guess.  Stuff like this seems to characterise the kind of immediacy that might suggest.

Should you feel so inclined - you can find me on there by simply searching for: hughmarwood.  

Christopher Wool, 'East Broadway Breakdown', C-Print, 1995-95

It also occurs to me that there's a certain correspondence between my shots here, and some of those in Christopher Wool's 'East Broadway Breakdown' suite, from the mid 1990s.  Maybe that's no real coincidence - as I was researching Wool's work while writing my last post.  Either way, I am always drawn to the deliberately slip-shod and profoundly quotidian nature of his photography.  Now, if I could just break myself of my Photoshop habit...

Christopher Wool, 'East Broadway Breakdown', C-Print, 1994-95

CMYK Screen Printing Weekend At Leicester Print Workshop

Untitled 4-Colour CMYK Screen Print (Test Piece) On Paper,
200 mm X 146 mm (Actual Image), 2019 

With a lot of time spent laboriously fettling cardboard boxes, fridge doors and abandoned trundle toys, over the last eighteen months - my printmaking excursions have been fairly few and far between.  I made an attempt to rectify that recently, and to reboot my enthusiasm for screen printing in particular - by attending Leicester Print Workshop's two day CMYK-specific training course.  It proved to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and has certainly inspired me me to get back into the workshop, now that the blessed school holidays have finally kicked in.

Untitled 2-Colour CMYK Screen Print On Paper (Test Piece),
200 mm X 146 mm (Actual Image), 2019

Untitled 3-Colour CMYK Screen Print On Paper (Test Piece),
200 mm X 146 mm (Actual Image), 2019

Although I'd done a fair bit of screen printing in recent times (prior to 2018's sculpture-orientated, spare time-devouring, energy-sapping endurance test), it had all been either single-colour photographic stuff, or featured the fairly unsophisticated layering of single, flat colours.  There's still plenty that can be achieved that way, of course (and certainly, I'd only scratched the surface of what's possible), but getting to grips with proper, CMYK separations, in order to play with the real potential of full colour, photo-derived imagery, felt like a missing piece of the jigsaw.

Untitled 3-Colour CMYK Screen Print On Paper (Test Piece),
200 mm X 146 mm (Actual Image), 209

Screen printing has always felt like a logical extension of the fact that nearly everything I produce, nowadays has  photographic origins.  Strangely - for someone who can often be pretty dim, or a bit 'analogue', where technology is concerned, the translation of imagery between different media, and the whole embrace of once wholly-commercial processes of image reproduction, feel pretty intrinsic to my process, nowadays.  It probably  has a lot to do with the resolutely urban nature of everything I do, and the way that such imagery contributes to the urban landscape.  Certainly, the insertion of oversized (usually highly idealised) commercial photo-imagery, into an otherwise physical (and possibly less than 'ideal') context, can provide some pretty thrilling shocks to the perceptual system, I find.

Untitled 4-Colour CMYK Screen Print On Paper (Test Piece),
200 mm X 146 (Actual Image), 2019

Untitled 3-Colour CMYK Screen Print On Paper Test Piece),
200 mm X 146 mm (Actual Image), 2019

I'm far from the first to notice all that, of course.  It's been a staple of the Post-Pop sensibility for 60-odd years.  Nevertheless, the interaction between the 'real' and the imagistic remains a key feature of the actual environments in which I spend most of my waking hours.  The appropriated, printed imagery of Warhol or Rauschenberg, the 'stolen' photography of Richard Prince, or Christopher Wool's boundary-hopping slide between paint, photography and print (and back again) all seem like pretty appropriate accompaniments to my daily experience.  Of course, younger artists might scoff at this - pointing out that these are all quite elderly exemplars, and that the physical or printed artefact is itself now 'well-obsolete'.  The integration of secondary imagery (or text) into our routine experience has, after all, become an all-pervasive, virtual process, at this stage of the cultural game.  The effortless negotiation of simultaneous parallel 'realities' is something many folks now take for granted, and hardly worthy of comment.  In which case, sue me! - I'm old enough for some kind of techno-historical perspective to actually make sense.  Also, staring at electronic screens, all day gives me eye strain.  Besides, aren't a bit of 'craft' and a degree of retro-appeal what all the really cool kids crave, these days?

Untitled 4-Colour Screen Print On Paper (Test Piece),
225 mm X 150 mm (Actual Image), 2019

Untitled 4-Colour Screen Print On Paper (Test Piece),
220 mm X 145 mm (Actual Image), 2019

Anyhow, I digress.  LPW's two-day course gave me all the new learning and techno-tricks I needed to make colour separations in Photoshop, and a useful refresher in the fundamentals of screen printing technique, to boot.  I was pleased to find that my muscle memory for things like photo-emulsion application, squeegy angles, and pulling pressure, hadn't deserted me in my recent absence.  I could just concentrate on the things that are crucial to full-colour halftone printing, like precise registration and relative colour density - without having to go all the way back to Square One.  As a result, the prints I produced (whilst they can only be regarded as experimental practice pieces) turned out to be encouragingly successful.  In fact, I've even sold one, without actually trying  (who'd've thunk it?). 

Oh, and if any eagle eyed visitors here should notice that not all my registration was exactly spot-on - I blame an initially loose pair of hinge clamps.  The only sensible course of action was embrace the error, and designate the wonkiest of my early prints as  'experimental', as the cyan and black went on.  That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

All Remaining Images:  Sneinton, Nottingham & West Leicester, January - July 2019

It is worth noting that the image I chose to reproduce was selected from an ever-expanding tranche of recent photographs, concentrating on major construction and redevelopment activity.  There's a lot of that going on in my neck of the Leicester woods, just now - with several major new buildings already nearing completion, and a lot more scheduled to follow over the next few years.  This is all part of the grand plan to redevelop a significant tract of West Leicester, between the inner ring road and my own neighbourhood.  It will transform the riverside area formally known as Blackfriars/St Augustines, and extend into the equally neglected post-industrial Frog Island area beyond - to exactly what effect, only time will tell.  Those particular environs have featured on here, several times, and I'll confess, I'm already slightly mourning the loss of one or two of my old favourite derelict hot-spots. 

But to live in a city is to embrace change and celebrate often-dramatic physical transformation.  If the region is to be transformed from a marginal playground of creeping stasis and desolate reverie, into a sleekly designed and heavily marketed zone of new-found density and intention - so be it.  The changes now unfolding are undeniably exciting - as new structures emerge, and empty sections of the map, and equally vacant intervals in the city's skyline, are suddenly filled in.  My lens already loves the intricate networks of scaffolding, complex geometries of newly-erected steel, jointing patterns in incomplete cladding, and glistening curtains of fresh glass.  The insertion of functional constructors' signage, developers' marketing babble, and aspirant, hyper-real architects' impressions all feel like valuable grist to the mill too.

Certainly, it all feels far too significant to ignore - particularly for an artist who constantly bangs on about being so in tune with their urban surroundings.  If, as seems likely, it all provides fuel for another eventual body of work - perhaps there's no reason why that couldn't be a largely print-orientated enterprise.  As ever - we'll see.  In the meantime, I'll conclude this post with few more taster images - possibly to prime the pump, as it were.

Thanks to Katie, Harley, and all at LPW concerned with organising the CMYK Screen Printing Weekend,  29-30 June, 2019.  I plan to be back soon, to implement some more of my new learning.