Richard Wentworth has been a pioneer of New British Sculpture since the late 1970s.  His interest lies in the items we use every day, using found objects, often in unusual juxtapositions, to create his sculptures.

He has always used photography as an observation tool but only started to exhibit those images in the mid-1980s.  I find this interesting as putting them into the gallery space has changed their context; the addition of an external viewer has altered the discourse from personal note to art and raises the question of whether art without a viewer can be considered art at all.

Wentworth’s photography work takes in the detritus of human existence: the result of mundane acts carried out; repurposed and abandoned objects.  As he explains “…what is a television that is sitting on the roadside miles away from an electricity supply?  Is it still a television?  It’s something to do with being dead yet alive.  It’s the small human acts that reach out to my way of seeing.”

Incorporating humour and a sense of the bizarre, Wentworth uses his sculptor’s eye to spot the geometries and quirkiness within found scenarios and uses them to raise questions in the viewer’s mind about the minute human acts that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Genoa, Italy, 2004

Caledonian Road, London, 2007

References:

www.lissongallery.com/artists/richard-wentworth [Accessed 12 April 2020]

Bright, S. (2005) Art Photography Now. London: Thames and Hudson