I tried various different types of paint for the castings, including spray paint, acrylic and a gloss furniture paint. It was the furniture paint that I found worked the best as it gave the castings a shiny finish, which made them look more completed.
“Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist who collaborates with nature to make his creations. Besides England and Scotland, his work has been created at the North Pole, in Japan, the Australian Outback, in the U.S. and many others
Goldsworthy regards his creations as transient, or ephemeral. He photographs each piece once right after he makes it. His goal is to understand nature by directly participating in nature as intimately as he can. He generally works with whatever comes to hand: twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice, reeds and thorns”
“In the nature of things:
Art about mobility, lightness and freedom.
Simple creative acts of walking and marking
about place, locality, time, distance and measurement.
Works using raw materials and my human scale
in the reality of landscapes.
The music of stones, paths of shared footmarks,
sleeping by the river’s roar.”
The influence of Richard Long has been prevalent in my practice in this unit, and consumed much of my research for this unit. I have copied and pasted my unit 8 essay below that I wrote on Richard Long that goes into detail about how his practice relates to my work.
Richard Long and The Importance of the Human Experience through Nature
We are living in a digital age, and the art world has followed suit. Artists are no longer reliant on using the same materials, as there are unlimited possibilities that have come from changing technologies. But I wonder if because of how much society has changed through technology, social media etc. do we still have a strong connection with each other, and to the earth? Sometimes it seems like everything is so accessible and real, intimate human experiences are less frequent. In light of this, I have been researching artists who have used nature and its materials to create art that connects with the earth. An artist whose practice particularly defines this and interests me is Richard Long. His work is based on places and experiences, he uses the natural world and natural materials to measure space and time to portray these experiences. His style is very minimal and raw, giving it a quality that makes it relate perfectly with its surroundings.
Richard Long’s work has made him one of the most important and influential artists in the Land Art movement. He produces powerful work which he creates and documents on the long walks he takes through beautiful, varied landscapes. For instance, ‘A Line in the Himalayas’ (1975), he used rocks that he found in the immediate area to create a sculpture and then photographed it. One thing that I have been exploring in my studio practice is the idea of how the use of natural materials in my work may make the piece temporary, whether due to decay or lack of sustainability. Because although Richard Long took the time to place these rocks, carefully and with intent, as soon as he leaves, they could be easily moved by another hiker, or just by nature taking its course. It is this idea of impermanence that I find particularly interesting in contrast to the type of work that I have created in the past. The art gallery is a very protected environment, and although sometimes interactive or immersive, gallery work is coddled and treated with fragility. In our practice we are constantly encouraged to have a digital copy of everything, and for that to be backed up. I have found it extremely refreshing to strip back my work and focus on the use of natural materials and particularly the fleeting quality that it provides. In his 1980 statement, ‘Five, six, pick up sticks. Seven, eight, lay them straight’, Long references this lack of permanence fondly and states,
“I like the way the degree of visibility and accessibility of my art is controlled by circumstance, and also the degree to which it can be public or private, possessed or not possessed.” (Long, 1980, p2)
In recent months, my practice has been called ‘romantic’ by my peers as the subject matters I have been exploring in my work are often philosophical and existential in nature. This is something that Richard Long has often spoke out against as he feels like it is a mischaracterisation of his work. I feel like it is very easy to place him in this romantic category as the idea of being inspired solely by the beauty of walking in nature is quite a quixotic ideology. Throughout his studies at Saint Martin’s School of Art in the late 1960s, Richard Long made a bold statement against modernism. This was a radical time for sculpture as its conventions were changing rapidly. There was a strong desire to relocate from the studio into a more dynamic space. The lines between sculpture, painting and performance were becoming blurred. Land art was a product of conceptual and minimalist art movements. Land art was becoming a radical movement that served to counteract the commercialisation and fetishisation by the institutional museum and galleries of the time. This influenced artists to shy away from galleries and make site specific work, that would potentially not make money due to its impermanence, distancing themselves from the art market in a sense. Art critic Rosalind Krauss feels that the Land Art movement constitutes as postmodernist as they feature a ‘structural transformation of the cultural field’ of sculpture (Krauss, 1979, p30). Long’s work challenged the modernist ideas of what qualifies as being a sculpture. In a sense, the goal of Land Artists and fellow postmodernists was to ‘interrogate the relationship between art and life’. (Long and Wallis, 2009, p39)
To a lot of people, Richard Long’s work is purely based on chance. That the work he creates is defined by the location and that there are no preconceived ideas or intent beforehand. I feel this is a slight misconception, because although there is an element of chance, his work is more of a response to the environment he is in, but not entirely controlled by the location. It is a amalgamation of his ideas, time and space. A lot of the time Long has researched the area that he is going to, and has made executive decisions about where to go based on the type of terrain, landscape, weather etc for the particular type of work he wants to create. This is all of course subject to change as nature is unpredictable and sometimes the locations would not meet his expectations, or he would utilise materials that he would have never expected to find. For example, in
his 1984 interview with William Furlong, Long tells of how he had an idea to create a sculpture of stones on a mountain in Central Africa, but when he got there there was no snow or ice so he had to change his plans. He then found cactuses which had been burnt in a lightning storm, a material he would never have thought about until he had actually been there in person. And of course it is not only natural elements that can change his practice, the effect of other people can hinder ones plans. In this same interview, Long continues to explain how he was advised to change locations whilst in Alaska, because there had been two tourists murdered there the previous weekend, and was suggested to go towards the west coast instead as the people there would perhaps be more welcoming. And in this slight of chance Long was able to create work actually on The Arctic Circle, which would not have been possible had he went to the original location.(Long and Tufnell, 2007) So I understand there is a degree of chance when it comes to working with natural elements, and It is this ephemerality of land and environmental art that I find so intriguing. And although in terms of form and aesthetics, his work may be similar, whether it was in North Africa or on the Irish Coast, each piece has a different spirit, scale and presence.
Time, silence, space and slowness are all prevalent themes in Richard Long’s practice. And it made me wonder, does this slowness still have an effect today, is it still relevant?His work leaves traces of his presence, and his passing to a new location. He leaves a temporary mark on the place, and although always inanimate, the works represent either a form of movement or stillness. For instance, to me a line or spiral represents movement and a journey, whereas a pile of stones or a circle represent stillness, a sense of staying.
The work of Richard Long is definitely more about the process than the photographic evidence of its existence. It is about experience and form, and it is the act of the walk that he takes that finds the art. He is inspired by his surroundings and responds to the land in a dynamic way. The walks themselves are in a sense ritualistic and he often describes the work more about the type of walk that produced that particular sculpture, rather than the sculptures aesthetic merit. To quote him on the topic, “I am an artist who makes walks. A walk defines the form of the land in space and time beyond the scale of sculpture or the fixed image. Some of my walks are formal (straight, circular, rhythmic) almost ritualised. I have climbed around mountains instead of to the top, I have made walks about slowness, walks about stones and water. I have made walks within a place as opposed to a
linear journey; walking without traveling.” Long has always held this ideal that the work he creates does not belong to him, that it still belongs to nature and when he leaves, nature will move everything back into place. He always ensures that he does not disturb the land he is working in, and his work can be, “anonymous in nature, but not in the Museum Kunst
Palast” (Long et al, 2003 p23). In this statement he is not only saying that his work is often hidden in nature, but to the indigenous people who dwell in the region of the sculpture may not recognise it as art at all. They may see it as something, ‘mysterious, or meaningless, or beautiful’. To Long this does not seem to be a problem as he makes it more for his own ‘culture’, meaning the contemporary art world he works in. (Long et al, 2003 p24). This work may be tampered with by local people after he leaves, or perhaps they will never touch it at all, and it has more permanence than he has previously thought.
Another interesting thing about his practice is that he has stated is that his, outdoor sculptures are ‘places’, meaning that the place inspires the idea for the work, and it also provides the materials for the work, and the work is a part of that place, too difficult to gage where the work starts and ends, because it is a part of the place. The work is the place. The photographs he takes do not comprise the work itself but captures the spirit of the place, and how Long felt at the time and his one to one relationship with the environment. He has stated that he doesn’t want to make a location identifiable through the photographs, as this would potentially destroy its spirit. “The place is as far as the eye can see from the sculpture.” Additionally, Long gives his works vague names such as, ‘A CIRCLE IN THE ANDES (1972)’ or ‘THE HIGH PLAINS: A STRAIGHT HUNDRED MILE WALK ON THE CANADIAN PRAIRIE’ (1974), which tells us the region, but it would not be possible to find the exact location, he was stated that he is wary of these places becoming famous, somewhere people would want to visit. It is merely a park of passage. (Long et al, 2003 p24)
Much like how some artists is inspired by the feeling of canvas, or the smell of paints, Land artists feel that connection with the earth in their practice, the connection that sometimes feels lost in our busy and technology focused lives. These sensory triggers, even looking at land art photography really remind us of how inherently beautiful nature is, and provides us with a deeper connection to the earth. Prior to discovering the beauty of land art, my current project was based around the idea of interconnectedness and oneness with the earth. I want to create something that serves as a metaphor for the connection of all living organisms and the cyclical nature of life. I understand that this is quite an idealistic way of looking at the world, but it feels much more real for me than anything else I have experienced. To me Richard Long’s work embodies this perfectly. And these emotions felt through our senses, to me are not able to be recreated through technology. In a sense, the rise of technology has diminished our relationship with nature, in addition to our relationship with each other, and the way we communicate. Our connection to the earth is still key in the human experience even in a digital age, we just need to make the effort to reconnect.
Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966) explores the intersections of art and technology over 50 years of dramatic change, through 100 works of art by over 70 artists and collectives.
“Aleksandra Domanović’s work is concerned with the circulation and reception of images and information, particularly as they shift meaning and change register, traversing different contexts and historical circumstances. Her works create strange taxonomies and manic associative chains that poke and prod at copyright laws, unpack the geopolitical implications of web domains, or explore, for instance, the model of exhibitions (the co-creation of the collaborative exhibition platform vvork.com).
Most recently, Domanović has turned her attention to the complex ways in which image culture and information flows have formed the postwar environment of former Yugoslavia. Whether investigating the phenomenon of what she dubs ‘Turbo Sculpture’ — monumental statues of American celebrities and movie characters like Bruce Lee, Johnny Depp, and Rocky Balboa, that have been erected across the former Yugoslavia — or constructing modest steles out of printer paper emblazoned with digital distortions of images from pre- and postwar life, or making semi-autobiographical forays into a rave scene that united the youth of the balkanized Yugoslavian territory, Domanović addresses the ways in which we attempt to heal the wounds of history through conviviality and denial.”
“Although Littleton had cast a gloved hand in glass in 1979, it was not until 1989 that he and Vogel began to explore glass casting in earnest. The large, work-worn hands of an artist friend inspired one of their early sculptures;initially cast in plaster, the hands and arms, as well as the faces, of family members and friends, children and adults, appeared in subsequent works. Their “Crystal” series includes blocks of colorless crystal glass, faceted to look like large pieces of rock crystal; in the center of the transparent forms frosty white hands (which are actually hand-shaped voids in the glass) hold small rock crystals aloft. The artists left these crystalline forms in favor of cast cubes of crystal that entrap three-dimensional faces and hands. The human forms soon broke free of the cube, appearing in the round with the fine details of skin texture, wrinkles and hair preserved from the original plaster casting. These works appeared in colorless and purple tinted glass. During the 1990s the glass, tinted blue, mimicked “water” from which colorless glass faces and hands seemed to arise. In the brochure for the a twenty-year retrospective of the artists’ work, Joan Byrd wrote of the dichotomy between the continuing series of Bags and the cast sculptures.”
“…the work is playful and seems effortless. The cast sculptures, on the other hand, bear the weight of profound adult concerns. Primarily colorless or monochromatic, these pieces are monumental in aspect.”
The method that I decided to undertake for my plaster castings is not the most resourceful. Because you have to tear apart the alginate to get to the casting underneath, you can only use the mould one time. This also means that I had to make them in multiple sessions, and I could not replicate the hands. If I were to cast again I would maybe consider doing silicone moulds instead.
“Ultimately what I hope to create is a moment where the inside and outside collapse, allowing closer consideration of self and other.”
“The works of Sarah Best exist at once in physical reality, and suspended in a place of memory and imagination within the mind and body. Best experiments with ideas of corporeal space and the figuration of emotion through gestures of the body, revealing emotional truths that lie beneath our day-to-day interactions. Her works contain inner self-reflections that render visible a paradox: the infinite and continually changing proportions of consciousness, and the finite physical laws of the body. The result is a stark confrontation with the vulnerability and solitude of the human experience.”
“Bavarian artist Nils-Udo has been working directly with nature since 1972. One of our Curator’s Choice Artists, Nils-Udo turned from painting nature to creating site-specific pieces using natural materials. His stunning and lyrical artworks have appeared in Europe as well as Japan, Israel, India and Mexico.
The artist works on site using found berries, leaves, sticks, the movement of water, the growth of plants. Each piece is in response to the landscape and materials he finds around him. The beauty of nature and the gently altered landscapes revealed in Nils-Udo’s work are entrancing and mysterious. It is a seductive world of “potential utopias”, colorful mounds, giant nests and dreamy days in the forest. Nature is the source and inspiration.”
“Even if I work parallel to nature and only intervene with the greatest possible care, a basic internal contradiction remains. It is a contradiction that underlies all of my work, which itself can’t escape the inherent fatality of our existence. It harms what it touches : the virginity of nature… To realize what is possible and latent in Nature, to literally realize what has never existed, utopia becomes reality. A second life suffices. The event has taken place. I have only animated it and made it visible.”
I have become more and more fascinated with ‘environmental artists’ and how the use of natural materials could compliment my castings. I want to incorporate human form with natural materials as I am exploring the idea of oneness.
Research Journal 