Philadelphia
That’s Wright
by | Sep 25, 2024 4:10 pm
Posted to: Visual Art
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Walkin Round My Head
The Magic Gardens
1020 South St.
Philadelphia
Sept. 24, 2024
“Create, create, create,” London artist Stephen Wright said while standing beside some of the 200-odd pieces of found-object art he produced for his latest show, Walkin Round My Head.
Wright traveled from his own “House of Dreams” museum in London to Philly’s Magic Gardens this week to speak to his “don’t‑be-precious” approach to art amid the opening of the exhibit and the release of a new book.
There was no talk of culture shock. Instead, philosophical familiarity was everywhere to be found as Wright reflected Tuesday night on the importance of spontaneous and self-motivated creativity inside a gallery made entirely of mosaic art.
Before signing copies of New House of Dreams Book — a photo series of his work compiled by himself and his partner, Michael Vaughan — Wright took us on a tour of his two-room show inside the Magic Gardens.
“I have a thing for gloves, hats and eyeballs,” Wright said as he led us around what looked like a zoo pen for his thoughts. Throughout the space was a hoard of multimedia-made forms — some humanoid, others exclusively animalistic, a few utterly alien — paired with words taken straight from Wright’s head and/or diary.
Other than a hand-stitched horse-of-sorts with at least six different gloves for feet, my favorite piece was a tapestry featuring a written message: “I don’t want to play the game.”
The statement is constructed out of a mix of lower and capital case letters cut from various cloths. (There’s plaid, floral, polkadot, the whole shebang.) The best part is an awkward footnote strung unevenly to the top of the piece that couches, “We all lie sometimes. Especially to ourselves.”
I interpreted this as a comically simple recognition of human contradiction. That’s what’s interesting about Wright’s work: He doesn’t overthink it. His uses refined skill to combine lost-and-found objects and supplies in eye-catching ways. The result is a chaotic cast of characters and ideas that have been made beautifully harmonious despite their obvious abnormalcy.
That is similar to the mission of both House of Dreams and the Magic Gardens, two museums meta-moonlighting as artworks in and of themselves.
Wright opened House of Dreams with his late partner in 1998. Isaiah Zagar began developing the Magic Gardens in the 1980s. Both are ever-evolving structures that become more powerful through their accrual and repurposing of damaged goods: Whether it’s broken glass or babydoll heads, the artists behind those institutions are able to find a home for scrap materials as part of a living art project.
The House of Dreams is described by Wright as property refashioned into a “shrine for the unloved, forgotten, discarded.” Though the vision was broadly inspired by Wright’s refusal to conform. “I don’t want to plan what I’m doing, I don’t want to be sensible, I don’t want to be an adult, I just want to be spontaneous,” he said. The meaning behind the project deepened a few years after its inception when Wright’s partner passed away, closely followed by the deaths of both of his parents.
After losing the whole of his immediate family in the span of just a few years, Wright said, he doubled down on the belief that “the work is my family.”
He said his work — a non-literal family tree of vibrant fabrics and prints often anthropomorphized through googly eyes and false lashes — is often incorrectly described as “outsider art” despite the fact that he’s undergone advanced schooling. The real way in which Wright is an outsider — according to himself — is that “I stand up for who I am and what I have to offer.”
“I don’t want to play the game. I make the rules. We’re all being forced to conform with something. And this one isn’t gonna do that!” he said of himself.
Today, he and his husband live in separate houses a mile apart. Wright wakes up at 4:30 in the morning to start his “compulsive” creative process. He puts earbuds in to avoid “any outside influences” and only watches television right before bed.
A member of the crowd questioned why Wright slips back and forth between cases in his writing. Perhaps to express volume? she wondered aloud.
He denied any such logic: “I’m mildly dyslexic and that’s how I write,” he stated. Isaiah Zagar, a Magic Gardens staffer pitched in, is also dyslexic.
Through his bluntness, Wright is not only a prolific artist but a graceful speaker. When another woman requested advice for young artists struggling with perfectionism, Wright declared that “perfectionism just isn’t in my vocabulary.” Nothing is perfect. Just keep going, he said. Even in Philly, he noted, he’s been picking up pieces of plastic and tin resembling noses and ears to take home to England.
Though the exhibit is titled Walkin Round My Head, Wright’s work goes to show the freedom that comes with letting go. Instead of overthinking it, just let it go, whatever it is — and if it lands on a pen and paper, it might just be good enough to get sold in a gallery.
As gallery assistants gushed about how many of Wright’s works had already sold, I wondered whether it doesn’t hurt to say goodbye — as in SELL — so-called family members?
Wright weighed in: “I don’t think it’s good to get attached. I don’t look after them once I make them … They need to have a life.”
NEXT:
“Walkin Round My Head” remains on view at the Magic Gardens through Jan. 12. You can buy Wright’s new book on his website here.
