ART CITIES:London-Richard Long
Richard Long is one of Britain’s leading conceptual artists. His work explores interventions in the landscape, tracking and documenting alterations to the terrain made by his footsteps alone or gathered from the materials of the place, left as evidence on site. He ranges across mountains, valleys, shorelines, deserts, rivers and snowscapes and records his interventions with photographs, maps and texts.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lisson Gallery Archive
While Richard Long’s work with natural materials aligns him with the Land Art movement, his repetitive, reductive gestures and simple gestalt forms connect him to Post-Minimalism. The centerpiece of “Circle to Circle”, Richard Long’s solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery, is the floor-based stone circle, “Flint Wheel” (2018) the work is loosely themed around different uses of the circular motif across his practice. Constructed from knapped or split Norfolk flint, the stones radiate out from a central nexus like spokes on a wheel, alternating in tone between the chalky white exterior and each flint’s darker core. The circle is easily understood as a whole, despite his insistence of retaining the distinct identity of each piece. Through Long’s careful placement, the rocks fit carefully together, yet no two touch, highlighting not just the shape created, but the negative space between each component. The result is both one single unit and an assemblage of individual parts. We can also read this distinctness as a sign of respect to the material in its most natural state. Since the rocks do not touch, the viewer is asked to consider each individual rock as a sculpture unto itself. This geometric, starburst pattern refers back to previous works by Long, such as “Paddy-Field Chaff Circle” (2003), a temporary circle of radial lines made in the Maharastra district of India, while the sculpture’s material relates to a recent flint and slate circle, “North South East West” (2017) made for his major exhibition at Houghton Hall last year. Echoing this is a new River Avon crescent mud work, created by the artist directly onto the wall at the gallery. A round shape, this work is bisected by a sweep of marks tracking Long’s gestural movements as he applies viscous mud to the surface with the resultant splashes and drips appearing below. A text work, titled “From Circle to Circle From Space to Earth” (2002) made after a continuous walk of 39 miles from a full moonrise to the sunrise, is also a poetic description of one night in the planet’s constant state of revolution. Just as Long’s work obliquely references ancient symbols, beliefs and superstitions surrounding sacred sites and stone circles, it also reflects the occurrence of shapes and forms in nature, at both the macro- and the microscopic level. In a recent photographic work, “Circle in the Amazon, Brazil” (2016) Long arranged palm leaves into a circular mound, leaving only a gentle imprint in the chaotic fabric of the jungle. The first iteration of the circumference in Long’s work harks back to his earliest days as an artist after leaving his first art school. In 1966 he made “Turf Circle”, in which Long convinced his neighbour in Bristol to allow him to cut and remove shallow triangular sections of soil before putting back the grass as a slightly lowered, circular bed.
Info: Lisson Gallery, 27 Bell Street, London, Duration: 11/5-23/6/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, www.lissongallery.com
