Richard Tuttle: I Don”t Know . The Weave of Textile Language

I Don’t Know, Or The Weave of Textile Language is a unique project by the renowned US artist Richard Tuttle. It will be the largest survey of his work ever held in the UK, which will include a major exhibition of Tuttle’s career to date at the Whitechapel Gallery and a newly commissioned sculpture to be presented in Tate Modern’s iconic Turbine Hall. Measuring over twelve metres in height, it will be the largest work ever created by the artist. Richard Tuttle 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: textile. Textile is 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. The exhibition investigates the importance of this material throughout history, across Tuttle’s remarkable body of work and into the latest developments in his practice. 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 photographs of his collection, texts about the historical, aesthetic, social and material value of textiles, images of works from the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition and documentation of the sculpture at Tate Modern.