Richard Tuttle
Magnus af Petersens
Achim Borchardt-Hume
Poppy Bowers
Hansi Momodu-Gordon
I Dont Know - The Weave of Textile Language. This 5 decade survey focuses on his use of textiles as test site. Colours mutate as they seep through cloth; canvas becomes geometric abstraction. Even sprockets, wires and stitching are part of his lyrical visual syntax.
curated by Magnus af Petersens, Chief Curator, Whitechapel Gallery and Achim Borchardt-Hume, Head of Exhibitions, Tate Modern with Poppy Bowers, Assistant Curator, Whitechapel Gallery and Hansi Momodu-Gordon, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern.
Whitechapel Gallery
and Tate Modern announce a major collaboration celebrating
artist
Richard Tuttle.
The UK’s
largest ever survey of the renowned American sculptor and poet Richard Tuttle will take place
in London this Oc
tober.
It will comprise
a major exhibition
at the Whitechapel Gallery
surveying
five decades of
his career, a
large
-
scale
sculptural
commission in Tate Modern’s
Turbine
Hall and a new publication.
Entitled
I Don’t Know. The Weave of Textile Language this unique project
has been specially
devised by
the artist
and focuses on the particular
importance of textiles in his work.
Richard Tuttle
(b 1941)
came to prominence in the 1960s, combining sculpture, painting, poetry and
drawing. He has become revered
for his delicate and playful approach, often using such humble,
everyday materials as cloth, paper, rope and plywood. For this project, Tuttle has taken as his starting
point one of the unsung heroes of everyday life: textiles.
Textiles
are
commonly asso
ciated with craft and fashion, yet woven canvas lies behind many of the
world’s most acclaimed works of art and textiles are of increasing interest to artists today.
I Don’t Know
.
The Weave of Textile Language
investigates the importance of this materia
l throughout history, across
Tuttle’s remarkable body of work and into the lat
est developments in his
practice.
The Whitechapel Gallery
presents
a major exhibition surveying
Richard
Tuttle’s
career from the 1960s to
today.
He is renowned
for being one of
the first artists to make the
radical gesture of taking the canvas
off the stretcher and hanging it directly on the wall in works such as
Purple Octagonal
(1967), as well as
making provocative
sculptures such as
Third Rope Piece
(1974), the intimate scale
of which
directly
responds to
traditional ideas of
monumental
art.
Showcasing works selected in cl
ose dialogue with the artist
the exhibition
centres
on his use of fibre,
thread and textile and
offers
a fascinating introduction to Tuttle’s influential body of work.
The
exhibition will include
Looking for the Map 8, (2013-14),
a new work sho
wn in the UK for the first time on
display alongside
works made in situ by the
artist such as the re
-
making of the key sculpture
Ten Kinds
of Memory
and Memory Itself
(1972)
as well as
international loans from museums and private
collections.
Rather than
displaying the works chronologically,
the artist will
instead
position works i
n a fo
rmal
relationship to each other
and in direct response to the architectural framework of Whitechapel
Gallery’s historic exhibition spaces. A concern with colour, line and movement runs through
Tuttle’s
intuitive presentation
which will occupy both gr
ound and first floor galleries,
featuring works ranging in
scale from the intricate series of
Section, Extension
wall pieces to the 3
-
metre long floor
-
based
sculpture
Systems VI
(2011).
Commission
14 October 2014-6 April 2015
Free
Alongside this exhibition,
Tate Modern will present a newly commissioned sculpture in its iconic Turbine
Hall from 14 October 2014 to
6 April
2015. Principally constructed of fabric, it will be the largest work
ever
created by the artis
t, measuring over twelve metres in height.
It will bring together a group of
specially
-
made fabric
s, each of which combines natural and man
-
made fibres to create different textures
in
bright colours.
These will be suspended from the ceiling as a sculptural
form,
contrasting
with the solid industrial architecture of the Turbine Hall, to create a huge volume of joyous colour and
fluidity.
Publication
A new book will be published as part of this project, drawing on Tuttle’s knowledge as a longstanding
collect
or of textiles from around the world. It will include
contributions by the artist and new essays by
Magnus af Petersens
, Chief Curator, Whitechapel Gallery and Achim Borchardt-Hume, Head of
Exhibitions, Tate Modern. The publication will bring together
photographs of
Tuttle’s personal
collection
of textiles, images of works from the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition,
and documentation of the sculpture
at Tate Modern.
Richard Tuttle was born in New Jersey in 1941, and now lives and works bet
ween Maine, New
Mexico and New York. His work is held in major private and public collections around the world
and recent retrospectives have been held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of C
ontemporary Art, Chicago and the
Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
Talk: Richard Tuttle: In conversation
Thursday 16 October, 6.30pm - 9pm
Press contact:
Rachel Mapplebeck or Anna Jones, call +44(0)20 75227880 / 7871 or email RachelMapplebeck@whitechapelgallery.org / AnnaJones@whitechapelgallery.org
Media View: 13 October 2014, 9am–1pm
Whitechapel Gallery
77–82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX
Nearest London Underground Station: Aldgate East, Liverpool Street,Tower Gateway DLR.
Opening times: Tuesday – Sunday, 11am–6pm, Thursdays, 11am–9pm.
Admission free.