Richard Long

As if a breath of fresh air and with an almost succulent simplicity, Richard Long once stated, “My works are about lines and stones and walking”. With nothing in hand save a camera and compass, Long treads his way through expansive landscape recording his artistic journeys upon the biggest canvas known to man. As he roams earthy terrains from Scotland to Bolivia, each walk inspires an idea for Long, making his explorations his very unique art.

A sense of neurosis surrounds this lone wonderer as he paces the same line repeatedly, drops stones at intervals or re-arranges rocks into circles and spirals. He acts without pretence or plan; often unaware of what will be created until he finds a section of wilderness that inspires him.

His sculptures are documented by a few photographs, after which he then packs up his tripod and unaffectedly moves on, leaving his works without frame or signature. It is exactly this evocative vulnerability that make Long’s works so resonant, for without the protection of strong gallery walls, they are left abandoned, soon to be washed away like messages of love paved in sand or one’s first footsteps in the crispest snow.

Impermanence, however, has been said to leave Long unphased, in fact, fascinated, as his very mission is to capture the unending cycles of life. His fixation with time is thus apparent; just as the rain melts away his sculptures, the marks we make upon the world are equally trodden upon or forgotten. In his words “everything that moves leaves a trace of passing-it leaves a line” and one can only assume that Long wishes us to view nature’s symmetry as an amalgamation of journeys past and present.

Unlike a number of artists today, Long delights in the idea that his pieces might not even be recognised as art as he admits “If I were well-known I couldn’t do my work”. A far cry from the expanding egos of the art world, Long revels in the anonymity nature kindly provides and one can only guess that he prefers to work undisturbed; man against nature, one vertical against an expanse of horizontal.

I’m not lucky enough to have met Richard Long but something tells me that it would be hard to track him down. Like a gust of wind he would slip right past me; the only traces of his existence perhaps a few crumbs on a napkin, and one set of very muddy footprints.

Luckily not all of Long’s works have escaped unnoticed. On 3rd June-6th September the Tate Britain will hold Richard Long’s first major retrospective exhibition for eighteen years in which four decades worth of sculptures, large-scale wall works, photographs, writing, maps and books will be put on display; so grab those hiking boots and get moving.