Making do and getting by © Richard Wentworth
The narratives of Making do and getting by record hypothetic urban gestures, scenarios made out of "nothing", in a state of deambulation, of non-directed action. But also an intuitive sense of timing and spatial direction. As Francis Alÿs puts it : sometimes to make something is really to make nothing; and paradoxically, sometimes to make nothing is to make something.
An Area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty © Artangel © Richard Wentworth
Playful hazards led Wentworth through his project An Area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty : it took time to understand what to do as Artangel gave him too much freedom. At the time King Cross' hectic crossroads carried the perfumes of a red light district, the Eurostar tunnel was still being raised and the area was mostly industrial, derelict, not an obvious place for art but a place he was found of.
© Container city @ Trinity Buoy Wharf
After visiting the original Container City at Trinity Buoy wharf, where stacked shipping containers are recycled into living modules, Wentworth thought of using a viewing platform. The idea informed the choice of a site, a General Plumbing Supplies store overlooking King Cross station with ceilings high enough to build a staircase and install a periscope above the roofs.
To use the space seen from the top of the staircase down into the store, Wentworth needed to create a kind of action.
This explains the idea of a ping-pong tournament and tables imprinted with A to Z map, turning the local warehouse into a meeting place, a geographical site for observation.
The viewers who entered the space didn't always know what to make of it but it gave them a right to their city, a right for leisure and play. Above all, it created a place out of time, need and purpose.
