Art 4b

Ephemeral gestures in the environment
(e.g. Long; Fulton; Goldsworthy).

The essence of the work of Long and Fulton is taking walks in the landscape and documenting these encounters with annotated maps, linear or circular arrangements of words relating to experience of place, photos or descriptions. The walk (a very British occupation) becomes, in the work of Long and Fulton, a highly ritualistic process of discovery, encounter and conceptualisation. This emphasis on art as embodying movement across and through a landscape is radically different matter from a static relationship, whether this be in the form of a painting, sculpture or earthwork. The only physical trace of the walk is in words or photos or, in the case of Long, (see e.g. Long 1996) objects found in place and brought into the gallery to be displayed. Sometimes Long builds small cairns or leaves geometric arrangements of stones or a trace in the grass from the imprints of his feet but these vanish into the landscape almost as soon as they are made and documented. Long comments on his practice: 'a walk traces the surface of the land, it follows an idea, it follows the day and the night' (Long 1980).

Goldsworthy's work (1990; 1990a; 1994), about which we will have more to say later in the form of dialogue with our own, typically involves (he has produced some large-scale earthworks) building sculptures with natural organic materials found in the countryside on site such as wood, leaves, flowers, grass. He may dig holes, colour rock pools, mark stones with leaves or flowers, build ice works or stone arches and cones, create snow balls. The work is no sooner completed than it begins to decay. And decay- process - is part of the meaning.