From Richard Wentworth to Gavin Turk, the pioneering male artists changing the medium

Some of the country's most celebrated artists showcase the menswear of the season for the day...

The Veteran: Richard Wentworth

Richard Wentworth’s preference to be snapped in the street "getting out of an Uber, or something", rather than posed in his studio makes perfect sense when you consider the septuagenarian’s work. One of the most influential British artists working today, his thought-provoking photographs and ready-made sculptures explore the everyday; capturing fleeting moments in an urban context. "Incidents," he says, "that make it worthwhile living."

A leading proponent of the New British Sculpture movement since the 1970s, he taught at Goldsmiths during the 1980s, playing a seminal role in shaping the YBA phenomenon. Still creating, because "that’s what happens when you fail to die," he says, Wentworth’s current photography show has his enquiring, egalitarian gaze focused on the atelier of couturier Azzedine Ala?a. His visual "notetaking" offers a detailed tableau of the craft of making clothes.

Knowledgeable about fashion, but not a slave to it, Wentworth describes himself as a "slightly dorky, slobby bloke" who will wear a T-shirt made for him by a student until the design fades and his wife tells him to chuck it out. "I care about the cut of my jeans, but wouldn’t dream of wearing any of this slashed shit," he concludes.

Richard Wentworth at Galerie Azzedine Ala?a, Paris, until 26 November; alaia.fr. Richard Wentworth’s Concertina is at arebyte, London City Island until 22 December; arebyte.com

The Champion: Gavin Turk

Former YBA Gavin Turk can hardly still be described as an enfant terrible – he is after all 50. Instead, the three-piece-suit-wearing, Converse-shod artist has adopted a more age-appropriate, curatorial role, enthusiastically championing his peers and a new generation of artists with several exhibitions. There’s Turkish Tulips, now at County Durham’s The Bowes Museum, with artworks – many newly commissioned – by Turk and the likes of Damien Hirst and Georgie Hopton. Then there was his participation in the Hackney Wicked festival, during which he hosted the work of 60 artists in his new studio at Here East in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. 

Now Turk has "shaved a corner off" the studio and turned it into a gallery called Cloud Cuckoo Land. "Redevelopment has forced artists to move out of Hackney, but artists are necessary for cultural well-being and health. I want the gallery to reiterate the fact that artistic engagement is vital." Currently on show are prints from Turkish Tulips, sales will raise funds for the educational children’s arts charity The House of Fairy Tales that Turk runs with his wife Deborah Curtis. 

His sartorial style has also evolved to support this more  paternal role. "I don’t like young people wearing suits, it looks weird – but as you get older it’s all right," he says. For an artist who plays with issues of self and identity, they’re clearly an extension of his art: tailor-made by Mat Whitley in working fabrics of cotton drill or raw artist’s linen, some are graffitied and one blue suit even comes in two versions – one smart, one studio – a trick of the wardrobe, typical Turk.

Turkish Tulips is at Press Centre End Unit, Here East, London E15, to 5 November; gavinturk.com

The Joker: David Shrigley

Brighton-based artist David Shrigley has just unveiled his latest sculpture at the Folkestone Triennial. Stylistically different from his Really Good giant thumbs-up that graces Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, this new work resembles a reproduction of the  Victorian street lighting lining The Leas promenade, but is actually a play on heritage, tourism and authenticity.

Shrigley asked the artist Camille Biddell to study Folkestone’s decorative street lamps for one minute before inviting her to his studio to draw one from memory, then it was cast life-size in bronze. ‘It’s too small, though, and looks slightly comical,’ says Shrigley. The reaction you’d expect from someone defined by a wry take on life, as depicted in his witty, often sardonic, cartoon-like sketches in black ink. When asked, he describes his work  succinctly as ‘interesting’, his delivery as deadpan as his art.

He’s currently working on "more colourful" drawings to update the walls of the Gallery restaurant in London’s Sketch, which is being renovated in January. There are multiple autumn exhibitions in Tokyo, Switzerland and Paris, a book idea gestating and he's been named Guest Director of Brighton Festival 2018 . Does he feel in demand? "Sort of, yeah, I always seem to be, but as my late grandmother used to say, 'you’re lucky if you’re busy'." 

Folkestone Triennial is on until 5 November;  folkestonetriennial.org.uk

The Disruptors: Bloomberg & Chanarin

"I wouldn’t describe us as war photographers," says Oliver Chanarin, explaining his 19-year creative partnership with Adam Broomberg. "Our work has always been about the role of photography in conflict zones, rather than the conflict itself. We’re interested in photography as a currency in our lives."

Their practice has evolved considerably; artistic endeavours running alongside commercial work for Benetton’s Colors magazine among others, until 10 years ago when art took over. Today, the pair are professors of photography at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg.

Passengers at King’s Cross St Pancras station can view their latest piece, a powerful 12-minute film The Bureaucracy of Angels, which explores the immigration crisis. "We’re expressing something about the Mediterranean Sea, which is a playground for us but also where people disappear – it’s a war zone," says Chanarin. Such preoccupations continue in their forthcoming show Divine Violence at the Pompidou Centre next February, exploring the history of conflict.

Clothing is normally not so high on the agenda, though they appreciate Comme des Gar?ons and Martin Margiela. Chanarin says, "We wear the same thing everyday until it breaks. We look like waiters at St John restaurant." 

The Bureaucracy of Angels, commissioned by Art on the Underground, at King’s Cross St Pancras Station, London, till 25 November; art.tfl.gov.uk

The Ideas Man: Jason Brooks

Jason Brooks is fascinated by the traditional medium of paint but, like his YBA peers who rose to fame in the 1990s, his approach isn’t old-school, it’s conceptual. Prepping in his Gloucester studio for his enigmatically titled forthcoming show, The Subject is Not the Subject, he says the title explains the "whole premise behind all of the work", which encompasses a wide vocabulary of painting from airbrush and acrylic to oils.

The exhibition will comprise his landscapes, inspired by  amateur paintings that he’s collected over 20 years from thrift stores and car-boot sales, to his hyper-real portraits of friends and his  devotional works and objects. "I’m interested in the language of painting and how it has the potential to transform the subject to see it afresh," he says, adding, "Growing up in Yorkshire we didn’t have high art on the walls, but something similar to the paintings that I collect. There is a love invested within them and a desire to succeed, even though failure is round the corner. We need to embrace that, it’s a wonderful thing." 

As the partner of Porter editor, Lucy Yeomans, Brooks’  sartorial tastes are highly evolved – Belstaff and Triple RRR Apparel are favourites – although fashion is rarely discussed at home and it’s strictly ‘no-frills’ in the studio. 

"Clothes are to do with context, so I’d wear a fitted suit to a dinner," he says. "I’m interested in the details of clothes, but spend the majority of time not being bothered whatsoever." 

The Subject is Not the Subject is showing from 9 February to 10 March 2018, at Marlborough Fine Art, London;  marlboroughlondon.com

The Entertainer: Jonathan Yeo

"I’m in the entertainment business," says self-taught portrait artist Jonathan Yeo of his profession, and when you consider his subjects – Kevin Spacey, Tony Blair, Damien Hirst, Cara Delevingne and so on – a list of the great, good and glamorous, you can see why he’s become such a headline act.

Yeo has been capturing people’s likenesses for 20 years and although his style is distinctive, it’s always evolving. "I’ve spent the last 18 months experimenting with new technologies – such as 3D scanning and virtual reality – and applying them to old practices of painting and sculpture," he says, taking a break from work in his Chelsea studio. The results will be displayed at the Royal Academy’s exhibition From Life, in December.

He’s also branched out into furniture, thanks to David Linley, with whom he struck up a creative rapport over the course of several portrait sittings. The resulting Linley Cassiopeia Screen marks the start of an ongoing collaboration. 

Paul Smith might be a style favourite, but Yeo confesses that "scruffy" is his default. "I like things that don’t crease too easily, and best of all that don’t show up paint stains too much." 

From Life is at the Royal Academy, 11 December to 11 March 2018; jonathanyeo.com

The Dandy: Robert Montgomery

It’s surprising that Robert Montgomery didn’t end up in the fashion business, so dedicated was his teenage self to the art of dressing-up. "I used to go dressed as a Victorian, like Oscar Wilde, in a double-breasted suit, a cravat, velvet cape and black-and-white shoes, to my local high school in Glasgow," he recalls,  considerably less flamboyant today. "I’ve always thought  of clothes as a democratic art form and a way to express yourself."

Today, he’s swapped capes for canvases, calling his work "concrete, or shape poetry", whereby the arrangement of words conveys as much meaning as the words themselves. "I like the frankness of text, contemporary art can just end up becoming decorative and I want to engage with a wider audience." Recent creations reference abstract works by Kazimir Malevich – big black squares overlaid with text celebrating post-war initiatives.

Joseph and The Cob Gallery present Hammersmith Poem and Love Letters to Kazimir Malevich by Robert Montgomery, 27 October to 25 November, and extends to Joseph, 2 Savile Row, London W1. The artist will be in conversation with Fiontán Moran in the store on 8 November; cobgallery.com

The Minimalist: Idris Khan

There are many layers to the work of Birmingham-born artist Idris Khan, both literally and metaphorically. Known for dark, densely overlaid images of photographs or digital scans, his subject matter may be culturally diverse – from the Qur’an to industrial photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher – but his work is underpinned  by an intellectual rigour and a striving towards abstraction.

His latest show, Absorbing Light, including paintings, sculptures and his first bronze pieces, is a response to the testimonies of ex-inmates of Syria’s notorious Saydnaya prison and how sensory deprivation affects how scale, mass and volume are perceived. One three-and-a-half-metre-long painting is composed of 47 black bars painted to replicate the altered sense of perception you experience when incarcerated. "When you’re in darkness for so long, you stop seeing solid objects. This prisoner said that the bars of his cell started to merge into blackness," says Khan. "I’ve pushed acrylic paint so that you can just faintly see the lines appear."

Resistant to pigeonholing, whether discipline or topic, he acknowledges that his preference for “forms and scripture and patternation” and ritualistic methodology chimes with Islamic art and the repetition that exists in a Muslim’s life (his liberal Muslim father moved from Pakistan to Britain over 40 years ago). He can also see the advantages, “It’s not necessarily where it all started from, but it happens anyway. At the moment we’re all looking for answers to do with Islam perhaps and identity as a British Muslim, or whatever it is that people associate with one’s name, I am allowed to touch on it and from that more political questions are asked and I find that quite interesting.”

Idris Khan: Absorbing Light, is showing until 20 December; victoria-miro.com