You know Richard Long. He's one of the British pioneers of Land Art. Does a lot of walking. He has an exhibition, Heaven and Earth, currently at Tate Britain, and I went to see it.
In retrospect, as it turns out, I think I may have muddled him up with Andy Goldsworthy – another (
the other) British pioneer of Land Art. But whereas Andy Goldsworthy's work is eminently
photogenic, Long's, on the whole,
isn't. He's more austere, and he concentrates more on the process rather than the results. And in this exhibition he's whittled the extraneous stuff – photos and suchlike – down to an absolute minimum. All you're left with is the process. And since it's him that does the walking, it's not entirely clear where, precisely, we the audience fit in to all this. Apart from paying the entrance charge, of course.
There's a slideshow of the exhibition
here. It's a little misleading, though. Nearly all the pictures are of that one large gallery filled with circles or rectangles of stone. That gallery is indeed there, part of the show, but it stands out as a kind of baroque (or *
cough * ba-rock) excess in the middle of the rather puritan offerings elsewhere. It's more or less what I thought the whole exhibition would be like. Which is why I went: I do quite enjoy that kind of thing. It may not be, if you'll pardon the expression, earth-shattering, but it's pleasing enough in its own small way. But the rest of the exhibition was, sadly, rock-less and indeed stone-less. Apart from a few not particularly exciting photographs, what we're presented with are simple descriptions of walks – and nothing else.
For instance:
HOURS MILES
A WALK OF 24 HOURS: 82 MILES
A WALK OF 24 MILES IN 82 HOURS
ENGLAND 1996
And that's it. Covering the whole wall, in very large letters.
The typeface, as I learn from
this review, is sans serif:
They are set centred in the space. They are in some combination of black, red and white ā black and red words on white wall; white and red walls on black wall. Again, the object is a kind of purism. This letter-face is as free of connotations as a letter-face can be. A centred layout is the neutral option. The colour schemes are the most basic.
Indeed they are.
Let's try another:
A STONE FROM ALDEBURGH BEACH ON THE EAST COAST CARRIED TO ABERYSTWYTH BEACH ON THE WEST COAST.
A STONE FROM ABERYSTWYTH BEACH ON THE WEST COAST CARRIED TO ALDEBURGH BEACH ON THE EAST COAST.
I forgot to note down the date of that one. Sorry.
WALKING TO A LUNAR ECLIPSE
FROM A MIDDAY HIGH TIDE AT AVONMOUTH
A WALK OF 366 MILES IN 8 DAYS ENDING AT A MIDNIGHT TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE FULL MOON
A LEAP YEAR WALK IN ENGLAND 1996
MEGALITH TO SUBATOMIC
FROM CARNAC TO CERN
A WALK OF 603 MILES IN NINETEEN DAYS ACROSS FRANCE TO SWITZERLAND
AUTUMN 2008
See what he's done there? Megalith to subatomic?
And this one, in a radical break from the usual colour scheme, is in white type against a sky-blue background:
A CLOUDLESS WALK
AN EASTWARD WALK OF 121 MILES IN THREE AND A HALF DAYS
FROM THE MOUTH OF THE LOIRE TO THE FIRST CLOUD
FRANCE 1995
Clever eh? And that's one whole wall of a reasonably-sized gallery. Big white letters; sky-blue background.
I'm not sure quite what reaction we're supposed to have, faced with these basic blocks of text. No photos, no maps, no mementos from the journeys. Do we peer at those sans serif letters from different angles, to get a better appreciation of their purity of line? Do our eyes mist over as we try to imagine the landscapes traversed? Or do we think, perhaps…ooh, he gets about a bit, doesn't he?
I'm afraid it all struck me as a little obsessive. I wonder what he was like as a child…
Oh do try to keep up Richard!
But I've got to put my right foot on the lines and my left foot on the paving stone…and keep count!…that's 136. When I get to 141, which is the number of lamp posts between us and school, then I swap over…
Oh for goodness sake…
and then my left foot goes…
Richard!! We're going to be late again! Keep this up and you'll never get to grammar school and get a decent job.
I don't need a job. I'm going to do this for the rest of my life.
Don't be ridiculous…
Right, now I'm going to cross the road in a straight line.
Richard!!!
We even get, as a separate item – or work of art, as I suppose I should call it (it's in an art gallery: you know the argument) – a
list of the tunes he listened to on one of these walks.
How does he explain his art?
Walking has enabled me to extend the boundaries of sculpture, which can now be deconstructed in the space and time of walking relatively long distances…
Mick Hartley 
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