Dartmoor Time

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Foreign. Commonwealth & Development Office, Carlton Gardens

Richard Long’s works are based on his physical and conceptual relationship to the landscape, and are often generated from solitary walks he undertakes in different parts of the world. His responses to these walks are expressed in different forms, from printed statements such as this, to photographs and sculptures made from natural materials, either on the spot or later in a gallery. Using maps, words and photographs he records things he has seen and evokes experiences he may have had on the walk, including those of time, space, movement, sight, sound and touch.

The words and phrases used in this work describe a particular walk Long undertook in 1996 on Dartmoor (a place where he has often worked) and record his response to the natural surroundings. Long has used the rhythm of the text and alignment of the words to create a picture of the walk in the mind of the spectator. The central theme of time runs throughout the piece, from the pace created by the text, to the reference to the actual time and place of ‘a continuous walk of 24 hours on Dartmoor’, and the allusion to its wider place in history ‘…climbing over granite over 350 million years old’. 

Land Art emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s as a response to the growing commercialisation of the art world and the power of major museums to set the agenda for contemporary art. By creating ephemeral work, often based far away from the traditional cosmopolitan art centres, artists felt they were escaping the material trappings of the modern world and were re-connecting with the natural environment. Initially begun on an immense scale in the deserts of western America, the style has come to encompass a range of artists and styles. Similarities between these styles can, however, be found in a shared interest in how time and natural forces impact on our environment. Some commentators have seen Land Art as a modern return to the landscape tradition. As Long explains; ‘My interest was in a more thoughtful view of art and nature. I was for an art made on common lands, by simple means, on a human scale.’ 

Long’s first work in this style was made in 1967 by repeatedly walking back and forward along the same line in a field of wild grass. The trace of his path formed a transient line through the grass that took on the appearance of a piece of formal minimalist sculpture. Subsequent early map works recorded very simple but precise walks on Exmoor and Dartmoor. Since these early explorations Long has remained a leading, and committed, figure in the thriving British Land Art genre.

Richard Long was born in Bristol in 1945. He studied at the West of England College of Art between 1962 and 1965. From 1966 to 1968 he was a student at St Martin’s School of Art in London. Long was one of an exceptional group of students at St Martin’s and counted Bruce McLean, Gilbert and George, and Barry Flanagan amongst his contemporaries. Like others of his generation he sought to push the boundaries of what was considered ‘sculpture’. In 1967, Long started making non-permanent sculptures by walking, cycling and hitch-hiking, documenting the ‘work’ through maps and photographs. His first walking sculpture was called A Line Made by Walking, England (1967), and was a line of flattened grass made by walking up and down repeatedly in a field. In the 1970s, as his practice developed, Long started incorporating the raw materials of nature in his work. Rather than make conceptual sculptures which only existed in as memories or in documents, Long began to make physical works for the gallery, such as circles, lines, and arches made of stone or wood, as well as mud paintings. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1976 and among the many exhibitions which have followed, notable solo shows include: the Guggenheim Museum (1986); the Tate Gallery, (1990); the Hayward Gallery, London, (1991); the São Paulo Bienal (1994); the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (1997); Yorkshire Sculpture Park (1998); Tate St. Ives (2002); and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2007). He has been short-listed for the Turner Prize four times; in 1984, 1987, 1988 and 1989. Recent solo exhibitions of Long’s work include shows at The New Art Gallery, Walsall and the Faena Arts Centre, Buenos Aires (2014); the Kunsthalle, Hamburg and The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent (2013); and at The Hepworth, Wakefield (2012). Long was appointed CBE in 2012 for his services to art.

Places

England, Devon

Subjects

conceptual art, text-based work

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), text work, printed

Artist

Richard Long (1945 - )

Title

Dartmoor Time

Date

1996

Medium

Printed text on paper

Dimensions

height: 102.50 cm, width: 157.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Anthony d'Offay Gallery, March 2001

Provenance

The artist; Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London

GAC number

17572