Between 1971 and 1987, Wentworth taught at Goldsmiths College and his influence has been claimed in the work of the Young British Artists. From 2002 to 2010, Wentworth was 'Master of Drawing' at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University and was the head of the Sculpture department at The Royal College of Art, London from 2009 - 2011. And so we find, among Wentworth's discoveries, a wine glass upended on the cast-iron spike of some railings, a car seat wedged in a plastic dustbin. We might groan at these examples of the out-of-place, but they have a kind of abject poetry. It is impossible not to be aware of Wentworth's self-conscious artist's eye, his sculptor's feel for things - how things are piled, or angled, how the plastic cups are crumpled and stuffed into the space between wall and drainpipe. He notices things that look like his sculptures, which seem to operate by the same organisational principles. Installation view at the 2013 Venice Biennale of Marino Auriti’s Encyclopedic Palace [Palazzo Enciclopedico], c. 1950s (collection of the American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of Colette Auriti Firmani in memory of Marino Auriti), photo by R Marossi verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ 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.

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. [3] Three different perspectives through photography, where the artists are a means to portray street findings within the urban landscape, its surroundings and its objects. Stephen Johnstone, ed, The Everyday, Documents of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel Gallery/The MIT Press, 2008, p 15 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? See Richard Wentworth, Making Do and Getting By, with an interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Koenig Books, 2016Most 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. 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: ​ That art is all about the private experience becoming public, and being turned into fame and fortune. There are artists with great life stories – Louise Bourgeois, Francis Bacon. But art is also made in a thousand other ways. Morgan Stanley Lates at Somerset House with The Courtauld brings artist Abigail Conway’s playful, participatory live art piece – Time Lab – to London for the very first time, staged in the spectacular surrounds of Somerset House’s courtyard, having been held around the UK, Asia and Australasia. ​

Both Atget and Wentworth are authors of photographic compendia which describe the great cities of London and Paris poised at two very different moments of change - at the twentieth century's beginning and at its end. For both, the city is a vivid yet fugitive place, continually undergoing cycles of renovation, disintegration and renewal once more. Its pavements are a 'stage' for social activity, and its physical details, however fleeting, full of meaning about the nature of an urban society - and what the individuals within it, own, do, make and improvise. 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 as well as the profligate nature of mass production and consumerism.

Exhibitions

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?

In August 2014, Wentworth was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue. [1] Making Do and Getting By [ edit ]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

In this unusual exhibition, Richard Wentworth's extraordinary series of photographs Making Do and Getting By (1974-2001), is brought into dialogue with the work of Eugène Atget (1857-1927), a figure who stands at the beginning of thinking about photography and Modernism. Wentworth, on the other hand, most certainly is an artist, of the most self-conscious sort, whose works might be seen as having been born under the sign of Marcel Duchamp. Atget spoke of himself as an "archivist" and called his photographs mere "documents". Man Ray had Atget as an interesting "primitive", yet there is nothing remotely primitive in Atget's talent. 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, and then at the Royal College of Art where he was a contemporary of Zoë Wanamaker and Tony Scott.

RETURNS & REPLACEMENTS

Making Do and Getting By, my photograph series [of everyday objects], because it can't be controlled, tidied up and framed. Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday (Vol 2), Verso, 1991, pp 20–21