We can't get enough of Wilfrid Wood's wonderful dogs

Not since we saw the Doge meme IRL on a street in Hackney have we been this excited by the face of a strange dog. Now, we’re excited by many strange dog faces, thanks to what looks set to be a brilliant show by Wilfrid Wood. Wilfrid’s work has long been a favourite at It’s Nice That, and has over the years included sculptures of Tom Daley and Paul McCartney and numerous bottoms for Levis.

Now, he’s back with a new show all about dogs, giving these wee Jack Russells, Labradors, Chihuahuas and the like his very surreal, slightly grotesque, always hilarious stamp – as we can see in these behind-the-scenes studio shots. Wilfrid says he chose to focus on the canine for the exhibition as a reaction to his last show, which he describes as a “rather unfocussed” collection of things he’d been working on for the last decade.

“For this I wanted a clear subject that everyone could understand and ‘Dogs’ seems about as direct as you can get”, he explains. Whatever the work has to say is there in the work, not in an A4 photocopied sheet you pick up at the desk. My stuff is all about characters and what could be more characterful than dogs? Big, small, aggressive, pathetic, funny and frightening, every human type has a doggy equivalent.”

The show, helpfully named Dogs, will be at Beach London from 4 December – 15 January 2015.