Interview with Richard Wentworth with Gavin Morrison
I find the best way to understand somebody’s art is to listen to them speaking, to try to discover what it is that causes them to make their art. Never was that more useful than watching the interview between Wentworth and Morrison that took place at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2016. The context of the interview was to discuss the book ‘Making Do and Getting By’ featuring street images of unusual observations of items on the fringe of everyday life.
The key take-out of this interview and the passage that explains this work came during questions.
He discusses being brought up in a judgemental household in 1950s Britain which he describes as ‘tutty’ and parsimonious. He suggests that was common ‘in all classes’ in post World War II Britain. He suggests that there was a collective desire ‘To get the world facing in the right direction, behave better, to conform’. The key comment was:
My only way out of that was to take the judgemental and project it onto the world. So I ALWAYS see the crack in the glass before I ever see the window. I will see the fault.
He became animated when asked if he had affection for the fault in the glass, he responded:
Yes! I am the fault in the glass.
The funny thing about the fault in the glass is that it still performs perfectly. It’s only the hugely anxious person who decides the glass must be replaced.
Interview notes
Bibliography
(1) Wentworth, R., 2016. Tuesday Evenings At The Modern – Richard Wentworth With Gavin Morrison. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlPi6lVHO9I> [Accessed 1 September 2020].
