Robert Hood

Robert Hood is one of New Zealand’s most interesting younger multimedia artists. His practice is playful and ironic in its observations of the existential condition and life in New Zealand (Christchurch especially). He is a snapper up of the unconsidered trifles of pop culture, recycling readymades and objets trouvés striking a particularly gentle and human note in an ever increasingly fragmented, marginalising and isolating society. He is equally at home with high art theory like Fluxus, constructivism and Situationalist aesthetics, discussing economics and politics, astrophysics and environmentalism, the Canterbury landscape, boy racers, and Marx Brothers films.

Hood has a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts. In 2007 Hood was made an Olivia Spencer Bower Fellow and has exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand including Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon, 4th Auckland Triennial (2010), Prospect: New Zealand Art Now at Wellington City Gallery (2011), From a City Forsaken by its Gods at Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney (2011), Animal Spirits, Sugar Cube Gallery, Stockholm (2011),  Tricksters, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (2012), the 7th SCAPE Biennial, Christchurch (2013), Chatterjee & Lal gallery, Mumbai (2014) and Precarious Balance, Toi Moroki COCA (2016). Hood pushes the boundaries of art without pretensions or clichés.

Dr Andrew Paul Wood