UNCOMMON GROUND: LAND ART IN BRITAIN 1966 – 1979 Andy Goldsworthy, Forked Twigs in A TOURING EXHIBITION FROM THE ARTS COUNCIL COLLECTION Water, 1979. Arts Council Collection, , London © the artist 5 April – 15 June 2014

Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain 1966 – 1979, a touring exhibition from the Arts Council Collection, culminates in a presentation at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) on 5 April 2014. YSP is home to many seminal, open-air installations by artists including Andy Goldsworthy and David Nash among others. Featuring the work of 24 artists and artist groups, Uncommon Ground is the most comprehensive exhibition of British Land art to date. The show questions how landscape and nature came to be key concerns of in Britain and explores the unique characteristics of the way Land art developed here. Drawn primarily from the Arts Council Collection and supplemented by loans from other major UK collections as well as the artists themselves, the exhibition takes a fresh look at British art between the mid-1960s and late-1970s and includes some of the most important artists working in the UK in that period including Tony Cragg, Antony Gormley, Hamish Fulton, Richard Long, Anthony McCall and David Nash. Curated by Nicholas Alfrey, (University of Nottingham) Joy Sleeman, (Slade School of Art, University of London) and Ben Tufnell, (Writer and Curator), Uncommon Ground examines the meaning Land art might have in a British context, where landscape has long been a recognised element of national art and identity. The exhibition reveals the distinct forms that Land art took here in Britain: Left to right: predominantly conceptual and ephemeral, hand-made and organic. The key Site-specific works at Yorkshire strategies developed in the UK included the photographic documentation of Sculpture Park actions, the positioning of walking and travelling as creative acts, combined James Turrell, Deer Shelter Skyspace, with an exploration of locality and a keen awareness of rural traditions and 2006. An Art Fund Commission. contexts. At the same time, the term ‘landscape’ was also being questioned Courtesy the artist. Photo Jonty and transformed by artists, provoking a renewed interest in older forms of Wilde landscape art, and in historic landscapes. From being seen as something Richard Long, Red Slate Line, 1986. old-fashioned and redundant, landscape became the ground of radical Courtesy the artist and Haunch of artistic experiment. Venison, London. Photo Jonty Wilde Within the context of YSP, Uncommon Ground is complemented by a broad collection of site-specific works in the open air including the Deer Shelter Skyspace by James Turrell, the American artist whose practice has considered light and space for over 30 years; Hanging Trees, Outclosure and Shadow Stone Fold by Andy Goldsworthy; Red Slate Line by Richard Long; and several works by David Nash including growing work 49 Square and charred sculpture Black Mound, two permanent works that are new to YSP. Artists featured in Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain 1966 – 1979 are Roger Ackling, Keith Arnatt, Boyle Family, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Tony Cragg, Jan Dibbets, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Barry Flanagan, Hamish Fulton, Andy Goldsworthy, Antony Gormley, Susan Hiller, John Hilliard, Derek Jarman, David Lamelas, John Latham, Richard Long, Roelof Louw, Anthony McCall, Bruce McLean, Garry Fabian Miller, David Nash, Roger Palmer and David Tremlett. A series of associated events, a new publication, with texts by Nicholas Alfrey, Joy Sleeman and Ben Tufnell, and a microsite (http:// uncommonground-artscouncilcollection.org.uk) accompany the exhibition.

NOTES TO EDITORS Prior to Longside Gallery - the permanent home to the Arts Council Collection’s sculpture holdings and an important research centre – Uncommon Ground was presented at Mead Gallery, University of Warwick (18 January to 8 March 2014), The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (28 September 2013 to 5 January 2014) where it was the first Land art exhibition to go to Wales, and Southampton City Art Gallery (10 May to 4 August 2013). ABOUT ARTS COUNCIL COLLECTION The Arts Council Collection is one of Britain’s foremost national collections of post-war British Art. As a collection ‘without walls’, it has no permanent gallery; it can be seen on long term loan to museums, galleries, schools, hospitals, colleges and charitable associations and in touring exhibitions and displays at home and abroad. It is also, importantly, the most widely circulated and easily accessible collection of its kind, with over 8,500 works available for loan. It is run by the Southbank Centre on behalf of Arts Council England. Established in 1946 to promote and enrich knowledge of contemporary art, the Collection continues to acquire works by artists, many at an early stage of their career, living and working in Britain and to foster the widest possible access to modern and contemporary art across the UK. It includes work by Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin, Lucian Freud, Antony Gormley, Barbara Hepworth, David Hockney, Anish Kapoor, Henry Moore, Bridget Riley and Wolfgang Tillmans. ABOUT LONGSIDE GALLERY AND THE SCULPTURE CENTRE Longside Gallery at Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a unique space for exhibitions, used on an alternating basis by the Arts Council Collection and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It is located adjacent to the Sculpture Centre which houses the Arts Council Collection’s sculpture holdings. The Centre enables the Arts Council Collection to extend its conservation and research programmes and to increase access to the sculpture collection through exhibitions at venues across the UK. Since Longside Gallery opened in 2003, the Arts Council Collection has presented a range of innovative and critically- acclaimed exhibitions including: Antony Gormley: Field for the British Isles (2005), 60: Sixty Years of Sculpture in the Arts Council Collection (2006), Unpopular Culture: Grayson Perry selects from the Arts Council Collection (2009), Structure & Material: Claire Barclay, Becky Beasley, Karla Black (2011), Flashback: Anish Kapoor (2012) and Garth Evans: An Arts Council Collection exhibition selected by Richard Deacon (2013). Yorkshire Sculpture Park has staged major monographic exhibitions at Longside Gallery by artists including Winter/Hörbelt (2004), Andy Goldsworthy (2007), Sophie Ryder (2008), David Nash (2010), Aeneas Wilder (2011) and Lucy + Jorge Orta (2013). 2014 also brings a new installation conceived especially for Longside Gallery by 2002 -nominee Fiona Banner (19 July–2 November 2014). ABOUT YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is the leading international centre for modern and contemporary sculpture. It is an independent charitable trust and registered museum (number 1067908) situated in the 500-acre, 18th-century Bretton Hall estate in West Yorkshire. Founded in 1977 by Executive Director Peter Murray, YSP was the first sculpture park in the UK, and is the largest of its kind in Europe, providing the only place in the world to see Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man in its entirety alongside a significant collection of sculpture, including bronzes by Henry Moore, and site-specific works by Antony Gormley, Sol LeWitt and David Nash. YSP also mounts a world-class, year-round temporary exhibitions programme including some of the world’s leading artists across five indoor galleries and the open air. Recent highlights have included exhibitions by Amar Kanwar, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Joan Miró, Jaume Plensa, William Turnbull and Isamu Noguchi. 60 works on display across the estate include major sculptures by Roger Hiorns, Dennis Oppenheim, Martin Creed, Anthony Caro and Magdalena Abakanowicz. Offsite projects include co-curation of the Kyiv Sculpture Project 2012 and 2014, Ukraine’s first international festival of contemporary sculpture. YSP’s core work is made possible by investment from Arts Council England, Wakefield Council and Sakurako and William Fisher. YSP is part of the European Land Art Network, an EU-funded project initiated by Springhornhof (Germany), Centrum RzezbyPolskiej (Poland), Arte Sella (Italy) and YSP. The Network aims to extend critical debate and understanding around the contribution art and artists can make to the sustainability of landscape, rural development and regeneration. The European initiative is also concerned with encouraging the creation of new land art works. Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, Wakefield WF4 4LG +44 (0)1924 832631 / ysp.co.uk

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