"(...) The first part of this organisation’s name comes from its previous location – the Woodmill building, rundown former council offices in Bermondsey, southeast London, that, from 2009 to 2011, was home to a hundred artists, designers and filmmakers. (...)

During a short period of itinerancy, enforced by the end of the tenancy, the six original studio holders – Naomi Pearce, Stuart Middleton, Anna Baker, Angharad E. P. Williams, Richard Sides and Alastair Frazer – in liaison with their newly founded board of trustees spent many hours working out what the Woodmill should be (as well as searching for a new location – no former primary school, warehouse or empty retail unit was left unturned). The upshot of this was a decision to build the idea of constant flux into the organisation’s character. This resolution was not just a pragmatic one, but also one that resonated with the Woodmill’s desire for perpetual reinvention, for avoiding its own establishment and for eschewing any desire to become an institution with permanent footings. Happily ensconced, for now, in a former doctor’s surgery (which supplies the ‘GP’ part of the new name: ‘general practice’) – in which the old waiting room doubles as a shared studio and temporary exhibition and screening space (dinners, gigs and workshops are on the cards), with each of the doctor’s offices becoming private work digs, including a gratis residency studio – the Woodmill will move on again after one year. And it will voluntarily repeat this annual migration for the foreseeable future. Each time it moves, the Woodmill will evolve: it may become more popular; it will engage with more people; it may get written about more; the gallery footfall may increase; the space it occupies may be larger; it may move somewhere smaller. But by the nature of its instability, it won’t put down roots. It won’t be forced into an upward trajectory. Which, in a world dominated by the socioeconomic buzzwords of ‘growth’ and ‘development’, where artists are categorised as failures if they don’t move from the ‘emerging’ label to ‘midcareer’ or ‘established’, is a pretty grand ideal."

Oliver Basciano (2012), "Off-Space no 9: The Woodmill, London - Entering the Establishment"
online available at: http://artreview.com/features/off_space_no_9_woodmill_london/
(accessed 13 Sep 2013)