Born in Samoa, 1947
Lives and work in London
Richard Wentworth CBE is a British artist, curator and teacher. He is Professor of Sculpture at The Royal College of Art, London.
He attended Hornsey College of Art from 1965 and worked with Henry Moore as an assistant in 1967. He was awarded an MA in 1970 from the Royal College of Art and went on to become one of the most influential teachers in British art over past two decades at Goldsmith's College, University of London, where he taught from 1971 to 1987. He was appointed by the prestigious German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to work in Berlin from 1993 to 1994, and in 2002 was made Master of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to art.
Wentworth emerged as a major British sculptor in the early 1980s. His work centres on the idea of transformation, of subtly altering and juxtaposing everyday objects which, in turn, fundamentally changes the way we perceive the world around us. In his ongoing series, Making Do and Getting By, Wentworth also uses photography as a means of documenting what might be called 'the sculpture of the everyday': a cigarette packet jammed under a wonky table leg; a makeshift construction to reserve parking space; a bucket jammed on to the side of a dented car so that the headlight can still operate. 'I live in a ready-made landscape', he remarked early in his career, 'and I want to put it to use'.
