Richard Long at Haunch of Venison

Richard Long, born in 1945 in Bristol, England, is widely acknowledged as a key figure in the development of post-War art, and his contribution has been recognized by numerous honors, including representing Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1976 and winning the Turner Prize in 1989.

The Time of Space, on view from Jan. 3 through Feb. 10, is Richard Longs second exhibition at London's Haunch of Venison. On view will be new and previously unseen works made during the past 10 years.

Since the mid-sixties Long has taken a radical approach to nature by expanding the potential scale of art through the medium of walking in the landscape. This exhibition reflects the global range of his work, from the Sahara to Scotland to Mongolia.

Photographs and text works record wilderness and rural walks which articulate different ideas about measurement, or rivers, or material relationships. Some walks are marked by sculptures made along the way, traces of his passage. These methods explore the boundaries and freedom of how and where art can be made. They engage the viewer imaginatively with work that is often distant in both time and space.

Burlington Northern (2003), records a six day journey by kayak down the Columbia River in Oregon. The text work Ocean to River (2005), is a walk across France which connects the beginning and end of the walk by carrying and pouring Atlantic water into the Rhône. The Time Of Space (1999) is a photograph of a stone circle, and measures the time between the making and the un-making of this sculpture during two walks on Mount Parnassus in Greece.

On the top floor of the gallery, two new large mud works on the walls demonstrate directly the simple, physical and powerful engagement that is a primary characteristic of all Richard Longs work, whether near or far.

Richard Long studied at the West of England College of Art in Bristol and St. Martins School of Art in London. Since his first one-man show in 1968 at Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf, Long has had over 200 solo exhibitions worldwide, including a retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1991.

He will present The Path Is the Place Is the Line from Jan. 21 to April 25, 2006 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A new artists book, Dartmoor, will be published to coincide with The Time of Space.




All Images Courtesy of Haunch of Venison, London, © Richard Long, 2005