I don’t have anything by Richard Long (above) but he often comes to mind. First because I was given a large well-illustrated catalogue for his exhibition at Tate Britain in 2009. Secondly, because I went to and was greatly impressed by the exhibition and thirdly because he works in a way unlike any other artist I know.
He is a sculptor, artist and photographer. He makes many of his pieces in the course of walks in Britain and around the world. In 1977 he made a circle of Bering Strait driftwood on the Arctic Circle and photographed it. Two years later he walked 113 miles in three days: from Windmill Hill in Wiltshire to Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. Its significance is that the inhabitants of Windmill Hill were the first to make permanent changes to their landscape by building barrows and at Coalbrookdale the Industrial Revolution was born.
His work is often impermanent surviving only in photographs. However, enough of it comes to galleries to let us get some sense of what he is doing. It seems wrong to see it in a gallery space as it belongs outside where it was originally created using local material. The Contemporary Art museum in Agen achieved a satisfactory compromise by placing this work by him on their roof.
It’s not a very good picture but gives an idea of the scale of his work. Also I forgot to note what stone it is and where from, two important facets of his work. At Houghton Hall in Norfolk he has made a circle of Cornish slate.
He does work on paper too, maybe daubing mud on with his hands. I believe that a huge panel made for the Tate exhibition is still there concealed behind a false wall as it is too delicate to move.
Nicholas Serota, in an article in the Tate catalogue, writes:
… Long’s work has conventionally been linked to a tradition of English engagement with landscape and nature. … No other artist … Has roamed quite so wide, recording journeys across uplands, deserts and icy wastes, along streams, rivers, across lakes and from ocean to ocean. The simplicity and economy of his work stands comparison with the marks and elemental sculpture of ancient peoples, but the form, language and meaning of his work is rooted in the contemporary world. His works are timeless in their rhythm and beauty…Few artists make us more aware of the power and fragility of the earth or, indeed, our own brief passage across its face.
The friends who gave me the Richard Long catalogue in 2009 recently walked between Stonehenge and the Avebury stone circles – a very Richard Long thing to do.
I thoroughly recommend the walk from Stonehenge to Avebury.
Best of all is to start from Salisbury via Old Sarum and up the river valley. As one walks up the valley to the Plain towards Stonehenge there are round barrows on all sides – an ancient landscape of enormous power. I walked through a field full of molehills about a mile from Stonehenge and said to one of my companions that I had been told to look at molehills for artefacts. And, literally, as I did so, I bent down and picked up an elegant little flint scraper.