Displays of Land and Light

Courtesy of the artist

Andy Goldsworthy, "Shadow Stone Fold" (2007)

Courtesy of the artist

Andy Goldsworthy, "Stacked Oak" (2007)

Andy Goldsworthy In the Studio: Ernesto Neto The Great Outdoors Handle With Care In Their Words: James Turrell and Andy Goldsworthy The NGA Gets an Andy Goldsworthy Installation

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Twenty years ago, Andy Goldsworthy, who was then virtually unknown, was asked to become artist-in-residence at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. In his time there, Goldsworthy established and enshrined his reputation, making work from natural materials he found in the park—elements bound to season and landscape that he documented as photographs and published in Parkland, the first of many books and photographs recording the beauty and ephemerality of his art.

“My remit is to work with nature as a whole,” he has said.

And now, Goldsworthy is back. Back at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park with a magical new exhibition.

Rounding out the show are specially commissioned outdoor works, a series of powerful and numinous interventions in the Underground Gallery and an extensive survey that illustrates Goldsworthy’s profound understanding of the social history of landscape, with specific reference to the 500-acre Bretton estate, home to the YSP.

Goldsworthy deals in perennial preoccupations or themes, and often combines one or more of these topics. Holes and portals, walking and journeying, documentation, the understanding of nature and time, agricultural structuring and layering of the landscape, performance and the body are all represented in this marvelous show of rooms coated in clay, which dries out into cracked parched shapes, sheepfolds, holes and domes, reinterpreted in new installations.

The Rainshadow photographs, created when someone lies on the ground during a shower of rain and creates a dry “shadow” area are sublime. They are so simple, but they encapsulate both Goldsworthy’s interest in performance and in the nature of time and documentation.

Archaeology and layering are two other preoccupations. Hanging Trees, a piece built into one of the estate’s historic ha-has, carries a sense of surprise and discovery, like an archaeological dig, revealing the layered histories of the land and of something hidden, yet present.

The numinous, often dangerous, quality of trees is represented by the Stacked Oak obelisk, a menacing monument made of curved oak trunks that fit together like a natural Rubik’s Cube. They dominate the entrance to the Underground Gallery.

I find Goldsworthy’s “paintings” much less compelling than his physical manipulations of the land, landscape, plants and animals, but Sheep Paintings is an exception. Created by the footfall and droppings of the animals as they pass across its surface, it looks like a highly blown-up section from a Renaissance drawing.

The show is exceptional, worth the two-hour train journey from London (King’s Cross to Wakefield). All in all, great day out—and in.

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And Now for More Light

An interesting exhibition at the Victoria Miro Gallery remembers the philosopher, poet and artist Iain Hamilton Finlay, who was himself something of an unacknowledged land artist (witness “Little Sparta,” the wonderful garden he made in Scotland that is filled with his inscriptions on stone).

But at the gallery, we have something completely different. “The Sonnet is a Sewing-Machine for the Monostich” shows Finlay’s rarely seen neon works, which date back to the early 1970s and represent a different way of extending his poetic ideas beyond the printed page.

And just so you know, the “Monostich” of the exhibition’s title refers to a poem of one line, such as Finlay’s neon-inscribed Poverty, pitted with larks.

In the upper gallery at Victoria Miro are the neon works from l993, which look as if they have been composed in the artist’s own hand. These one-line poems are quite gnomic, but, when combined with the neons, affect the viewer on several complex visual levels, which amplifies and enlarges the words.

In the lower gallery are neon works and wall texts relating to the French Revolution—a main theme for Finlay. A key work in this vein was A View to the Temple, an installation of four guillotines exhibited in l987 at Documenta 8, Kassel.