'Richard Tuttle: I Don't Know or The Weave of Textile Language' opens at Tate Modern

LONDON.- The UK’s largest ever survey of the renowned American sculptor and poet Richard Tuttle takes place in London this October. It comprises a major exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery surveying five decades of his career, a large-scale sculptural commission in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and a new publication. Entitled I Don’t Know, Or The Weave of Textile Language., this unique project has been specially devised by the artist and focuses on the particular importance of textiles in his work.

Richard Tuttle (b 1941) came to prominence in the 1960s, combining sculpture, painting, poetry and drawing. He has become revered for his delicate and playful approach, often using such humble, everyday materials as cloth, paper, rope and plywood. For this project, Tuttle has taken as his starting point one of the unsung heroes of everyday life: textiles.

Textiles are commonly associated with craft and fashion, yet woven canvas lies behind many of the world’s most acclaimed works of art and textiles are of increasing interest to artists today. I Don’t Know, Or The Weave of Textile Language. investigates the importance of this material throughout history, across Tuttle’s remarkable body of work and into the latest developments in his practice.

Tate Modern presents a newly commissioned sculpture in its iconic Turbine Hall from 14 October 2014 to 6 April 2015. Principally constructed of fabric, it is the largest work ever created by the artist, measuring over twelve metres in height. It brings together a group of specially-made fabrics, each of which combines natural and man-made fibres to create different textures in bright colours. These are 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.

A new book has been published as part of this project, drawing on Tuttle’s knowledge as a longstanding collector of textiles from around the world. It includes contributions by the artist and new essays by Magnus af Petersen, Chief Curator, Whitechapel Gallery and Achim Borchardt-Hume, Head of Exhibitions, Tate Modern. The publication brings 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.

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.