Richard Wentworth

Richard Wentworth (born 1947) is a British artist, curator and teacher.

Life and career

Wentworth was born in Samoa—then a province of New Zealand—in 1947. He studied art at Hornsey College of Art in North London from 1965, then at the Royal College of Art, where he was a contemporary of Zoë Wanamaker and Tony Scott.

Between 1971 and 1987, Wentworth taught at Goldsmiths College, and his influence is claimed in the work of the Young British Artists.

Making Do and Getting By

Since the early 1970s, Wentworth has been capturing chance encounters of oddities and discrepancies in the modern landscape in the ongoing photographic series Making Do and Getting By. In the work Shower, Wentworth attached a small propeller to an ordinary table, creating the impression that the furniture is about to take flight. For his 1995 solo show at the Lisson Gallery, he created False Ceiling, a flock of books suspended by wire from the gallery's ceiling.

In 2000, together with Fischli & Weiss and Gabriel Orozco, he worked in "Aprendiendo menos" (Learning Less), curated by Patricia Martín and presented in Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City. Three different perspectives through photography, where the artists are a means to portray street findings within the urban landscape, its surroundings and its objects.

In 1998 - 99, he curated Thinking Aloud, a national Touring exhibition organised by the Hayward Gallery at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge and Camden Arts Centre, London, that explored the creative process and the profligate nature of mass production and consumerism.

Honours

Wentworth was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to art.

References and notes