Tyburn Quay, Victoria Embankment, London
Tyburn Quay, Victoria Embankment, London: Richard Wentworth
Year
2024
Client
fereday pollard for Tideway
Artist
Richard Wentworth CBE
Service
Commission Management
Location
Victoria Embankment,London WC2N 5DJ
A permanent commission for Tyburn Quay, Victoria Embankment
Richard Wentworth CBE has been commissioned by Tideway to create an artwork for this new area of public realm within the River Thames.
Richard Wentworth's inspiration is London. He is fascinated by aspects of the capital's secret nature with a close visual reading of post-boxes, railings, CCTV masts and wing mirrors. His contention was that the city – indeed, the country – has never been very good at being glamorous, and is at heart a make-do-and-mend culture.
The artist’s response has been to create interventions which represent the everyday but can take on a range of meaning and uses in this specific context. The artist has developed his initial proposal for stacks of cast bronze sandbags to act as informal seating or perches to enable people to sit and look out across the river and creating an opportunity for gathering. The artworks have been cast from actual sand filled hessian sandbags and cast as single stacks. The foundry, Lockbund Sculpture Foundry, has authentically been able to recreate the forms and hessian texture of the bags.
The decision by Parliament in 1872 that the Embankment should be protected for the recreational benefit of Londoners following attempts by the Crown to develop the reclaimed land also resonates in the artist’s response. To slightly disrupt the orthogonal nature of the site and inject some subtle humour and intrigue. The artist’s response to this site is to consider the impact of Bazalgette’s legacy, including that of the political structure of London:
“…catch sight of any group of people in repose, at a bus stop, in a line waiting for a store to open, or anybody in a public place ‘watching’ the public. You can do this just as well in non-metropolitan sites, all those genre paintings with people leaning on gates or resting in stable yards.
The bale, the sack, the barrel, the keg, whatever comes to hand. Far from wanting to ‘illustrate’ any of these things I do, nonetheless, always notice the way we lean, prop, and rest ourselves.
Since the Thames lost its ‘shore’, the space was replaced with a kind of metropolitan invention (the word ‘boulevard’ comes from ‘bulwark’ - an adoption of the habit of walking around ramparts to take in the view. The 'prospect’.
The assemblage of accoutrements along the Embankment makes a multiplicity of references, ideas of ‘foreign lands’, requiems for Empire etc. I was always impressed by the representation of the saddle bags on the camels which make the decorative feet of the riverside benches.
Contriving something for these new sites which employs the language of the bale and the sack seemed apposite.”
Richard Wentworth lives and works in London. He has played a leading role in New British Sculpture since the end of the 1970s. His work, encircling the notion of objects and their use as part of our day-to-day experiences, has altered the traditional definition of sculpture as well as photography. By transforming and manipulating industrial and/or found objects into works of art, Wentworth subverts their original function and extends our understanding of them by breaking the conventional system of classification. The sculptural arrangements play with the notion of ready-made and juxtaposition of objects that bear no relation to each other. Whereas in photography, as in the ongoing series Making Do and Getting By, Wentworth documents the everyday, paying attention to objects, occasional and involuntary geometries as well as uncanny situations that often go unnoticed.
“Contriving something for these new sites which employs than language of the bale and the sack seemed apposite”
Recent exhibitions have been held at Prats Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona (2024); Prats Nogueras Blanchard, Girona (2024); NoguerasBlanchard, Madrid (2019); SWG3, Glasgow with Victoria Miguel (2018); NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona (2017); Galerie Azzedine Alaïa, Paris, France (2017); Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN, USA (2015); Bold Tendencies, Peckham, London (2015); 'Black Maria' (in collaboration with Gruppe), Kings Cross, London (2013); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010). His work is held in a number of national and international public and private collections. He was awarded an CBE in 2011.
For more information see: Richard Wentworth
For more information see:
www.tideway.london