Richard Wentworth is a British artist, curator and teacher who's sculptural work often remarks upon the structures that we rely on in modern life, by slightly subverting their purpose and form. He is also known for his ongoing photographic series "Making Do and Getting By", a collection of images that draw the viewer in to a seemingly mundane scene, exposing idiosyncratic mistakes and improvisations.
Wentworth, Introduced articulately by Nathan Henton, led us through a seemingly unconnected selection of images, tenuously linked by their subtle relationship to their environment.
Wentworth is a collector of moments in the man made world, accidental cross overs, holes, patterns, coincidences. There seemed to be a recurring interest in objects encroaching on one another's space, or the colliding of functions, such as yellow road markings crossing over a man hole cover.
He spoke of "Making Luck" as a method for collecting and creating. His work is a result of years of accidental collecting of images, moments, thoughts, unlikely situations, illustrated in his talk by a seemingly obsessive gathering of images that compare only in their strange impropriety.
Wentworth's teasing method of presentation actually revealed more about his method of working than pictures of the work itself may have done; a deeply visual and thoughtful person, Wentworth treats life as a constant treasure hunt, finding these gems in the most unlikely forms and places. One of his more memorable gems was the discovery of a previously unknown, since deceased artist who worked primarily in concrete and had a fastidious relationship to his craft. This care and specificity is beautifully exampled by a bucket of dark paint labeled "Eyes only", designated for use on the artists' figurative sculptures. It interested the audience that the artist had found a shade which he believed to be the "correct" shade for eyes.
Perhaps this surety touches upon something that Wentworth enacts in his own work, and in his collecting of information. He seems to have an innate relationship to the world and to his process of making, and an understanding that for him, art making is a process of discovery.
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