Richard Tuttle

Richard Tuttle

 

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 close 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 shown 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 in a formal 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 ground 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 (Media View: 13 October 2014, 9am – 1pm)

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 artist, measuring over twelve metres in height. It will bring together a group of specially-made fabrics, 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

collector 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.

Notes for Editors

 Richard Tuttle was born in New Jersey in 1941, and now lives and works between 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 Contemporary Art, Chicago and the

Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

 I Don’t Know, Or The Weave of Textile Language is 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.

 The publication is designed by Mark Thomson and is published by Tate Publishing in association

with the Whitechapel Gallery. Price £24.99.

Whitechapel Gallery Visitor Information

Opening times: Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 6pm, Thursdays, 11am – 9pm.

Admission free. Whitechapel Gallery, 77 – 82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX.

Nearest London Underground Station: Aldgate East, Liverpool Street, Tower Gateway DLR.

T + 44 (0) 20 7522 7888 info@whitechapelgallery.org whitechapelgallery.org

Tate Modern Visitor Information

Admission free. Open daily 10.00 – 18.00 and until 22.00 on Friday and Saturday. Tate Modern, Bankside,

London SE1 9TG. Nearest London Underground Stations: Southwark, Blackfriars, London Bridge. For

public information call +44 (0)20 7887 8888, visit tate.org.uk, follow @tate

Press Information

For further press information and images please contact:

Whitechapel Gallery: Rachel Mapplebeck or Anna Jones, call +44(0)20 7522 7880 / 7871 or

email RachelMapplebeck@whitechapelgallery.org / AnnaJones@whitechapelgallery.org

Tate Modern: Duncan Holden or Cecily Carbone, call +44(0)20 7887 4939 / 8731 or

email Duncan.Holden@tate.org.uk / Cecily.Carbone@tate.org.uk

 

from: Whitechapel Gallery and Tate Modern