Richard Wentworth: Making Do and Getting by

Product Information

AS The juxtaposition of Cheeman Ismaeel’s and WAMI’s works (Yaseen Wami and Hashim Taeeh), while both series make a reference to household or domestic objects, dismantles the division of private/public spaces. It seems that both series offer a form of defunctionalisation of the objects, WAMI with their minimalistic strategy and Ismaeel by personalisation of the ready-made objects connected to her memories and life experiences. The artists put the materials and the objects in a wider communication landscape. Would you consider reading these artworks as a response to the binary of femininity and masculinity? How could you see these artworks within the history of feminism and art? This summer, Somerset House presents Eternally Yours, a free exhibition exploring ideas around care, repair and healing. Staged across the three Terrace Rooms, Eternally Yours showcases diverse examples of creative reuse, from historical artefacts that embraced upcycling and repurposing, to recent work from leading artists and designers that have repair at the heart of their practice. This timely exhibition invites visitors to appreciate the worn and aged, uncovering the history and emotional value of the items we hold on to, rather than discard. It takes the idea of ‘repair’ as a philosophy and a provocation, inviting us to reconsider our way of life and relationship to the planet, and everything that surrounds us. Highlights include: ​ AS Over the years of your directorship at the Ikon in Birmingham, many of those artists that you worked with at the biennales have had exhibitions in the gallery. How do you define the practice of diversification in an institution such as Ikon? And do you apply different strategies in designing public engagements with non-Western artworks or those art works that are sensitive to the phenomenon of exoticism?

Wentworth has lived for many years in the Kings Cross area of London and in 2002 he realised the Artangel project An Area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty in which for three months he took over a plumbing supply shop in the area converting it into a base for visitors to explore and engage with the area. Most recently, Wentworth’s ‘Making Do and Getting By’ (2013) was included in the Hayward touring exhibition ‘Curiosity’. The exhibition’s curator Brian Dillon describes Wentworth’s work as ‘an archive or glossary of semi-sculptural modifications to the fabric of the everyday.’ Significantly, Wentworth’s pictures are abstract projections of the peripheral vision by which the artist negotiates the world. At the heart of the exhibition, ‘The Beasley Brothers’ Repair Shop', a pop-up created by designer Carl Clerkin and modelled on traditional East End repair shops of old, hosts live workshops and demonstrations from artists and designers including Peter Marigold, Gitta Gschwendtner, Jasleen Kaur, Poppy Booth, Fiona Davidson, Michael Marriott, Alex Hellum and Jon Harrison

JWThat’s absolutely right. I remember my father telling me about his time fighting in the Second World War. I asked what it was like and he said he was bored most of the time. But people forget this – especially now, due to the nature of news and current affairs. And this is why I didn’t want to dwell on diasporic points of view. Also, they tend to be fixated on questions of national identity and on what has happened to their country since they left, heightening emotions about what it is like to be there. But in Iraq then, children were still going to school, people were falling in love, watching TV, being bored, making films about everyday life ... JWI did that because I knew Penjweny made the work for a different kind of audience. Buzz and The Love of Butterflies were the kinds of films you could watch on your phone and not miss much. Not cinematic extravaganzas, they were like episodes from a sentimental soap opera on TV. The idea of watching films on laptops in the exhibition also occurred to me because that’s how people watch films most of the time in Iraq. I don’t remember seeing a cinema there. Jonathan Watkins, ‘Introduction’, Every Day, catalogue for the 11th Biennale of Sydney, J Spark and J Watkins, eds, 1998, p 15 JWI wanted to defy expectations. I liked the idea that the most comfortable place in Venice would be a kind of an artistic embassy for Iraq. People used to organise meetings there, because they could sit and talk over free cups of tea. We had a kitchen in the middle of the show that also served Iraqi biscuits, and the recipe is in the catalogue! We showed the films Buzz and The Love of Butterflies on laptops, and I do admit that the artists were a little disappointed that their work wasn’t being screened in a more conventionally artistic way.

JWYes, I did. I had a very short time to organise everything. The Ruya Foundation approached me in December and needed the curator urgently to go to Iraq. I had worked in Palestine and in Sharjah and they knew that I was interested in the Middle East and that I was sympathetic, which I think encouraged them. Azadeh Sarjoughian Can you explain why you chose the title ‘Every Day’ for the 11th Biennale of Sydney, and what was the necessity of choosing this theme at that time? Dezeuze, Anna (2013) Photography Ways of Living and Richard Wentworth’s Making Do, Getting By (accessed at Acedemia 30.9.16) – https://www.academia.edu/5269475/Photography_Ways_of_Living_and_Richard_Wentworths_Making_Do_Getting_By_Oxford_Art_Journal_36.2_2013_pp._281-300

b. 1947, United Kingdom

Wentworth, like Atget, rarely photographs people, and yet "his world is human, all the more human, for being uninhabited." Whether in his gentle anthropomorphism - a decrepit car, its drooping bumper bandaged with carpet as if wounded - or in his alertness to the practical, yet curious decisions made when dealing with the vicissitudes of life - like the hurried shopper who abandons his dog in the street, chained, not to the railings, but to his shoulder bag - Wentworth's photographs make us look afresh at the cityspace and the humanity it contains. JWAnd it was important to consider that there had been an Iraqi pavilion preceding mine that was like a reconstruction of a war-torn building with the emphasis definitely on conflict. So, I was positioning myself to some extent in relation to that. Isolating an object that already exists, bringing together and stage-managing found things not usually related to art, Wentworth tantalises us into a new realisation of everyday objects to be read in a brand new, unanticipated, way. WAMI (Yaseen Wami, Hashim Taeeh), Untitled, 2013, installation view in ‘Welcome to Iraq’ at the 2013 Venice Biennale, courtesy of the artists, photo by Francesco Allegretto Visitors will have the chance to explore what repair means to them first-hand, with live demonstrations and workshops in the installation at the heart of the exhibition, the Beasley Brothers’ Repair Shop. The brainchild of designer Carl Clerkin, the installation is modelled on traditional East End repair shops of old, that could - and would - repair anything. A host of artists and designers, including Gitta Gschwendtner, Jasleen Kaur, Poppy Booth, Fiona Davidson, Michael Marriott, Alex Hellum and Jon Harrison, will join Clerkin in the repair shop throughout the exhibition’s run, transforming discarded objects into something not only useful but beautiful. Designer Peter Marigold will show visitors the potential of Formcard, the mouldable, reusable bioplastics he created to fix broken objects and create useful everyday tools. ​