There’s a kerfuffle in the Camden Art Centre. Painter Richard Wright’s exhibition is opening soon and time is not on their side. Ten people are on the landing off which the galleries open. Huge, elaborate leaded glazed panels have just arrived, the metallic sections forming intricate geometric designs, and they need installing. It is a relatively new departure for Wright, teaming with artisans to work in glass. These panels need to be set precisely to hover just below the roof lanterns, so that light will flood through them and throw a dance of pattern and shape on the walls and floors.
Wright – intense, immensely tall, rapidly and quietly spoken – lets me know by his wry air of forbearance that he wishes they would just do it, and then the rest of the show can go up. In the galleries to either side are books laid on tables, some of them partially drawn or painted over, “illuminated” as he says, borrowing the word used of medieval manuscripts. On the walls there are many drawings and paintings. Some are made by dipping an old-fashioned cartographer’s pen in size (a kind of adhesive) before burnishing the whole surface with gold leaf: the gold sticks to the marks made by the pen, and the rest is shaken away so that a shimmering, fugitive drawing remains. In the main, vaulted gallery, scaffolding climbs up one wall and four people are arrayed on it in perfect symmetry, two below, two above, painting black stars, diamonds, triangles and other shapes into a great design up its back wall. The painters are Wright’s daughter and brother and two longtime assistants. He himself has just clambered down to talk to me, his fingers dotted with disobedient black acrylic.
