35°9,32°18
- Artist: Richard Wentworth
- Date: 1985
- Medium: Steel and aluminium
- Dimensions: displayed: 4130 x 1130 x 1270 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “35°9', 32°18'” by Richard Wentworth. The piece begins where a rough steel ladder, lifted from a scrap heap, leans against the wall like an off‑balance toy. It’s made of steel and aluminium and measures about 4.1 m long by 1.13 m high—large enough to be visible but still intimate. The ladder doesn’t touch the floor; it’s suspended just above it, as if the metal were caught in a moment of pause before gravity takes over.
Behind that first ladder you can see a second, thinner one made of cable. It is almost translucent and appears like a ghostly echo of the heavier structure. Together they suggest a visual dialogue between solidity and fragility.
The title itself comes from a grid reference – 35°9', 32°18' – which Wentworth asked a former philosophy student for after he was intrigued by Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28:10. The student answered “Oh yes” and sent the coordinates, turning a biblical image into an actual geographic point.
The work was presented to us in 1996, but it was made in 1985 for the Jerusalem exhibition that saw Wentworth’s ladders at the Israel Museum. It reflects his habit of taking everyday objects – in this case a ladder – and re‑contextualising them as sculptural gestures that play with space and idea.
See it in person
35°9,32°18 is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
