ART-PRESENTATION: Richard Long
Almost 50 years ago, while he was still a student at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art, Richard Long set off to hitchhike home to Bristol. Somewhere in the middle of the countryside he stopped, found a field, and walked up and down in the damp grass. He took a photograph of the resulting track, which he called “A Line Made by Walking” (1967), and with this simple act broke free from the confines of the gallery, and from the constraints of traditional sculpture.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Thomas Schütte Stiftung Archive
Sculptures and drawings of Richard Long are on presentation at Thomas Schütte Stiftung in Neuss/Holzheim, Germany. In expanding the definitions of sculpture, Long has incorporated interdisciplinary elements from Performance art, Conceptual art, and photography. Where photography began as a way of documenting his performative actions or temporary interventions in remote locations, it has evolved to be a carefully considered component of his work. Long insists that “even though a lot of my work takes place in the landscape, the gallery is the conduit for bringing my work into the public domain” and therefore it is necessary to create artifacts or records of his experiences that can be shared with a viewer. Richard Long’s work is rooted in his deep affinity and engagement with nature. Central to Long’s work is walking. Since the mid-1960s he has taken countless walks throughout the world, in places like: the Sahara Desert, Australia, Iceland and near his home in Bristol. The walks bring together physical endurance and principles of order, action and idea. From these walks emerge the idea and material for his works. Long’s sculptures commonly take the form of geometric shapes: circles, lines, ellipses, and spirals and are often composed of minerals native either to their location or to the British countryside Long has traveled by foot. He similarly sources mud and earth from his expeditions for use in performative paintings done on canvas or directly onto the wall. Mud from the River Avon near his home town of Bristol, together with white clay, have served the artist in his creation of linear and circular drawings. For these, he uses a base of flat, used objects found on his travels – sheet metal, wooden posts, tent-pegs and writing tablets. In 2013, the Alan Cristea Gallery approached Long to ask whether he would consider creating large-scale prints in carborundum – a technique that involves applying finely ground carborundum, dissolved in synthetic resin, onto copper plates. These prints do not involve etching etched, because the colored inks themselves adhere to the carborundum-coated surface, creating a painterly effect without the need for any laborious aquatint technique. For the first of these works, the carborundum paste was so thinly diluted that Long was able to apply it by hand, like watery mud, onto the upper edge of the plate, letting it trickle in narrow rivulets across the surface. Long chose two prints, respectively, tipping them horizontally and joining the short sides together. This was the first time he had worked with colour pigments instead of mud. The titles of these prints are taken from some of his favourite songs. Like the stones, the twigs and the fingerprints, the hand-painted prints leave a trace of human presence in the world.
Info: Curator: Dieter Schwarz, Thomas Schütte Stiftung, Lindenweg, Junction Berger Weg, (Near Raketenstation), Neuss/Holzheim, Duration: 7/9-16/12/18, Days & Hours: Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, https://thomas-schuette-stiftung.de
