Surely there can be no objections in walking to a Richard
Long exhibition? Even if it is only partly from Bristol Temple Meads train
station to the Arnolfini. You’ll hear no complaints from me! I don’t have a dog
or often seek out ventures to walk in romantic forgotten landscapes but
wherever and whenever I do walk, which is everyday and often as a means of
getting from A to B, I enjoy it!
Fundamentally Richard Long is an artist who has turned
walking into his art form. Simultaneously it is both process and product from
which the creative process is conceived and executed. Time, distance,
temperature, latitude and longitude become the measurements to which these
walks and interactions take place. Since the 1960s Long has been creating work
that explores how we move, document and experience walking in the landscape
using aesthetic approaches and thinking influenced from conceptual and minimal
art practices. In 1972 Long presented ‘Stone Circle’ at Arnolfini, Bristol
where now a new exhibition is on display featuring new and previous work from
Long’s relationship walking within Bristol and the South West.
“No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep
doing it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.”*
Murakami’s comment on running could be said as much for Long’s walking and they
share testament in the idea that the act of walking/running become very much
about thought through physical effort. In Long’s case this physicality of a
connection with the land takes form in natural human ancient traces of moving
stones or painting with mud. Anyone who has ever walked on their own for over
an hour in a particularly remote landscape can relate to the feeling of
escapism, isolation and (debatably) humbling smallness this kind of being
immersed in the activity of walking can create. What is interesting about Long is
how he attempts to bring these quite big, experiential, outdoor ideas into
the gallery.
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| Richard Long 'Muddy Water Falls' (2015) at Arnolfini |
In the ground floor of Arnolfini is Long’s
exhibition-based work at its most iconic and awe inspiring, ‘Muddy Water Falls’
(the mud of which, appropriately has been taken from the bank of the River
Avon). The work brings the outside, in; the mud creating two huge wall-based
mud works that appear to cascade down the back walls of the gallery in a partly
uncontrolled, partly hand painted piece of cave art. In its smell, texture and
earthy rawness it is quite striking and consumes the gallery space on an impressive
scale. Long’s wall mud works have a feeling of wildness about them, there is a
giving-in to the uncontrollability of the mud as it runs/splashes down the
walls but there is also a Sol Lewitt form of control to it as well. The
composition is divided between the controlled (i.e. painted back walls) and the
spontaneous which whilst alluding to ideas of an implied ‘wildness’ of nature
also and more significantly in Long’s work, touches upon our human relationship
within it.
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| Richard Long 'Time and Place' (2015) at Arnolfini |
Circles and cross motifs and lines are reoccurring symbols
in Long’s work and feature in sculptural and photographic works in the upstairs
gallery. ‘Time and Space’ (pictured) is a new work made from slate taken from a
quarry in Cornwall whom Long has worked with for many years. X literally marks
the spot with the cross being assembled in the heart of the gallery, its motif
sharing symbolism with points of a compass and other mapping devises. In the
room opposite a series of concentric circles mark the central floor space, a sculptural
piece which has been placed in many different sites including The Downs in
Bristol and in locations throughout the Irish countryside. It is at this point I
realise how far reaching Long’s work has been and ‘walked’ from photographic works
that depict walks in the Himalayas to Antarctica.
I have expressed an uncomfortable uncertainty toward land
art in gallery spaces before, believing it is a double-edged sword that on the
positive side provides exposure/education to this type of work but on the
negative side feels sometimes a little too detached, forced to conform and sterile from its starting source of the landscape.
Maybe that juxtaposition in itself is interesting. There is a new work titled, ‘Boyhood Line’ on
The Downs in Bristol as part of this exhibition that I didn’t get to see but
have seen Long’s work outside in Cornwall previously, often accidently crossing or stumbling over his line arranged stones! I
think these interactions with his work are more genuine and whereas work inside
the gallery reacts more architecturally to space these respond more to the
human body and our location within the landscape it is placed. Both perhaps, are important in documenting/preserving and ensuring (pardon the pun) the longevity of this artists work.
Richard Long, 'Time and Space' in Arnolfini is a point of departure and after leaving
the exhibition should really mark the beginning of a new experience of noticing
and engaging with world outside. The exhibition continues outside the
gallery...
Richard Long ‘Time
and Space’ can be seen at Arnolfini until Sunday 15th November 2015
*Haruki Murakami ‘What I talk about when I talk
about running’
