Output details

Black Maria - Public artwork

Black Maria is an architectural construct that served as an event space, meeting point, spectacle and screening device. Part of Wentworth’s ongoing investigation into architecture and sculptural practice, the project was commissioned by Relay and supported by Arts Council England. Black Maria was named after the first movie studio, a film production shed created by Thomas Edison in 1893. Wentworth and the Swiss architectural practice Gruppe designed Black Maria (2013) as a transformative structure that functioned as a public social space during the day and in the evening doors were converted into screens and the stairs were reconfigured as seats, turning Black Maria into a space for discussions, screenings and performances. Wentworth curated the programme of events and also hosted a series of conversations with the directors of Artangel, Camden Building Control Officer Albert Grant and curator Teresa Gleadowe.

Wentworth’s ongoing research into the sculptural function of architecture and its performative agency is developed in projects including ‘Twenty-Four Hour Flag’, a series of chairs installed on the exterior of St. Helen’s skyscraper, City of London (July 2013) and an architectural intervention of walking sticks at the 2009 Venice Biennale and at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland (2013). Further, Wentworth explored the relation between a utilitarian public space and a domestic private space with a series of photographs and a peripatetic event around the Balin House estate in ‘The Laundry Room’ (2012) at Balin House Projects.

Wentworth has also presented this research through public lectures including a discussion on how architecture communicates meaning with the architectural historian William J. R. Curtis at the Victoria and Albert Museum (March 2013) and on the public privacy of cities at the University of Cambridge symposium, ‘CRASSH: Beyond the Authority of the Text’ (April 2013).