BENEDICT RADCLIFFE

Benedict Radcliffe

Join us to celebrate the launch of our new film on artist Benedict Radcliffe and the creation of his full-sized wireframe Porsche 959.

Working in a discreet workshop in East London, artist Benedict Radcliffe has been turning out his instantly recognisable wireframe sculptures for two decades and making a name for himself as “the wireframe guy”, working for clients as wide ranging as Nike and London’s Heathrow Airport.

Radcliffe's most well known works have been his full size cars, fabricated from precision bent latticeworks of tubular steel. When we came to visit him for the production of our latest film, he was mid-way through his latest, a wireframe Porsche 959. That car has since been finished, having made its public debut in May of this year at the Wundercar event in Shoreditch, where the 959’s 40th birthday was celebrated with commissioned works from several artists in the automotive sphere.

It’s been a long career, with Radcliffe beginning life as a trainee school teacher of all things. Inevitably, the creative impulse drew him away from that however and he enrolled in Glasgow’s Mackintosh School of Architecture. There he built his first wireframe car, a full size Subaru, garnering the attention of art collectors and commissioning clients alike. Soon after, he was juggling jobs for Paul Smith, Puma and Commes des Garçons. In 2007 he set up his studio in London and it’s been a whirlwind journey since.

“I knew that I didn’t want to work in an office - I was much more comfortable in a workshop.” Says Radcliffe. The workshop in question is one of noise, sparks and welding spatter, a far cry from the romantic ideal of a cosy artist’s hideaway, as he elucidates in our film. However artistic the output, it remains the difficult work of a skilled metal fabricator, and there’s no guarantee at the beginning of a bespoke project that it’s truly going to work out as intended.

“I knew that I didn’t want to work in an office - I was much more comfortable in a workshop.”

“It’s a mission, we’re grafting and putting the hours in, somehow trusting the process that it’s going to work."

“It doesn’t particularly get easier,” he explains. “It’s a mission, we’re grafting and putting the hours in, somehow trusting the process that it’s going to structurally work and also visually represent a Porsche 959.”

Our new film BENEDICT RADCLIFFE is available to watch below or on the Type 7 Youtube channel.