Richard Wentworth
This week’s guest is the British sculptor Richard Wentworth, who chooses five objects that are meaningful in his life. Born in the late 1940s, he grew up in the suburbs of London and was educated at Eton College and then Middlesex University. He assisted Henry Moore as a teenager and in the early 1980s, along with contemporaries Tony Cragg and Bill Woodrow, became part of the New British Sculpture movement, which assembled everyday objects in pop, kitsch and witty ways and was seen as a reaction to the minimalism of 1970s sculpture. Over the years, his prodigious output has seen him build sets for Roxy Music, work with Azzedine Alaïa and teach at Goldsmiths University – where his students included Damien Hirst and Sam Taylor-Johnson, and he became a key influence on the Young British Artists. He has held major exhibitions all around the world, although perhaps his most enduring project is Making Do and Getting By, his long-running series of images of everyday objects used for something other than their original function: a boot wedged underneath a door to hold it open, for example, or a cigarette stubbed out on an upturned bottle top. He has held eminent positions such as Master of Drawing at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, and Head of the Royal College of Art’s Sculpture department. He was appointed Commander of the British Empire in 2011. He lives with his wife in north London and in 2018 begun working with Hospital Rooms, the charity that revitalises mental health hospitals with contemporary art. With host Danielle Radojcin.