Andy Goldsworthy A Collaboration with Nature Andy Goldsworthy A Collaboration with Nature

Edited by Terry Friedman and Andy Goldsworthy

Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers “As with all my work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I'm trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an at- tempt to understand the internal energy of the stone.”

Andy Goldsworthy 7 Foreword 9 Introduction

13 The Photograph Andy Goldsworthy 21 Beginnings Miranda Strickland-Constable 37 Environmental Sculptures Andrew Causey 53 Leafworks Paul Nesbitt Andy Goldsworthy is represented Projects by Galerie Lelong, New York, 75 Monuments Paris, Zurich and Haines Gallery, Terry Friedman 113 Holes San Francisco 93 Touchstone North 119 Throws and Splashes ISBN 0-8109-3420-5 Andy Goldsworthy Copyright © 1990 Authors as 125 Haarlemmerhout listed and The Henry Moore Cen- tre for the Study of Sculpture 131 Holbeck Triangle Published in 1993 by Harry N. 137 Glasgow Abrams, Incorporated, New York. All rights reserved. No part of 143 Quay Art Centre the contents of this book may be reproduced without the written 149 Yorkshire Sculpture Park permission of the publisher. 155 The Lake District Printed and bound in Italy by Artegrafica, Verona 161 The North Pole Scanning and reproduction by Leeds Photo Litho Ltd. 167 Castres and Sidobre Design by Yangin Shieh Contents 173 Snowballs in Summer

179 Bibliography 185 Acknowledgments 189 Contributors Bright sunny morning/frozen snow/ Andy Goldsworthy is best known for his small cut slab/scraped snow away with a stick just short of breaking through, ephemeral works created ad hoc in the landscape Izumi-Mura, Japan and recorded as photographs. Since April 1984, however, when he made Seven Spires in Grizedale Forest in the Lake District, he has completed five commissions for large-scale works, and has several more at the planning stage. There have been two projects at Grizedale, another woodland sculpture at Hooke Park in Dorset, and two huge Environmental earthworks on the line of an abandoned railway at Lambton near Chester Street and Leadgate Sculptures near Consett, both in County Durham. Goldswor- thy has plans involving the use of stone walls in Andrew Causey France and the United States, a series of artificial tree-clad mounds in Holland, and a set of cones made of layers of steel for a site overlooking the Tyne at Gateshead. Understanding these projects involves both defining them as a category and distinguishing them from Goldsworthy’s ephemeral works. Set- ting the photograph pieces against the larger more permanent projects, Goldsworthy sees himself as two different artists, but does not want the large works’ growing demands on his time to draw him away from the photograph pieces, which he sees as the core of his art.1 The distinctions between the kinds of work are most obviously the contrast of size and the quite different ways they are made. For the large projects to be properly understood, these distinctions need to be refined. Bright sunny morning a certain color are brought together, the random- frozen snow,cut slab scraped snow away with a stick just ness of nature is removed, and geometrical forms short of breaking through are created that highlight edges, crevices and Izumi-Mura, Japan holes.3 The works are elegant, refined exhibits of a craftsmanly virtuosity that makes us look at na- ture more closely. But in the sense that they bring the viewer up short, and surprise with their wit and resource, they are not natural. Their brilliance lies largely in their artifice, and the illusionism of color and scale aligns them with painting as much as sculpture. The photograph pieces often stand apart from their natural sur- roundings which become a form of background or context. Characterized in this way by having The small works are inspirations of the mo- 1. Unpublished notes. distinct boundaries, they work ideally as framed 2. Parts of this essay ment, made intuitively without plans or drawings, are photographs on the wall of a gallery. Without ex- the artist’s only tool being a knife. Goldsworthy is based on conversations aggerating the distinctions between the types of with the artist at Touching north Penpont during 1988, alone, he photographs the sculpture to preserve it, project in this respect, it can be said that surprise, North Pole 1989 and 1990, as well and a color print is then available for exhibition in as two undated letters illusion, and other characteristics that make the an art gallery. The large works, on the other hand, written in February small works immediately arresting and separate 1990 (The Henry are commissions, which may have been competed Moore Centre for the from their surroundings are less prominent in the for. Drawings are important here to clarify the Study of Sculpture large projects, where continuity with the environ- archives). project in the artist’s mind, support applications 3. Rain 1985, p. 4. ment is a part of their identity, and their char- and guide fellow workers. These projects involve 4. ‘Image is not the acter is partly defined by the modest, sometimes correct word, since, assistants, art students brought in to dig holes and unless we are speaking minimal, difference between the sculpture and the of the photograph only, 4 handle manual winches at Grizedale and Hooke, it is emphatically not adjacent landscape. Although distinct objects, the and the skilled operator of a mechanical excavator, an image of anything; environmental works differ from the small ones in but configurations, 2 Steve Fox, at Lambton and Leadgate. The early which would be that they cannot be removed from the landscape. commissions presented financial problems, and all more precise, I find To photograph one and place it on the wall of a inelegant. of them confronted the artist with organizational gallery would simply be to document what the art- challenges that the small works do not. The brief ist had done, rather than exhibit a work of art: the lives of the photograph pieces contrast with the life of the large works is there in the landscape long ones of the large works. Permanence elimi- and nowhere else. nates the need for photographs, so the large proj- ects do not become art works for sale in a gallery. Beyond these technical distinctions are oth- ers that help define the types of work further. The photograph pieces are rearrangements of nature in which, for example, stones, leaves or flowers of

38 Environmental Sculptures 39 Andrew Causey pools in the folds of his earthworks, the sun and shadow encourage some growth and not other.5 He is concerned with the way people respond to his sculpture, without trying to influence them. These points lead back to the question of Place is crucial to his art: a work must fit, must he avoided working in a clearing, which would what sculpture is. Goldsworthy did a sculpture draw on its environment and become part of it. have been the obvious choice if he had wanted to course at Preston Polytechnic, and is called a But place is distinct from mere space. Places follow the tradition of giving sculpture its own sculptor. But what is sculpture if, within the work have history and character and exist in time, space within a picturesque context. Goldsworthy, of a single artist, it is a photograph one moment and Goldsworthy’s sculptures, which gather by contrast, needed Seven Spires to work with and an earth work the next? Understanding Gold- meaning and character from places also exist in nature to the extent of becoming all but part of it. sworthy means taking into account the way sculp- time, being subject to natural change and any He wanted the pine trees to dictate the idea, scale ture has expanded its field in the last twenty-five other changes–of land use, for example–that and form of the sculpture, and in this has added a years, and distinguishing between something that affect public places as opposed to the protected new dimension to the idea of what sculpture can was traditionally to be looked at is now, think- space of an art gallery. be. With Seven Spires there is only modest differ- ing of the earthworks, something to be walked Grizedale is a working woodland run by the ence between the trunks that form the spires and over or cycled through. How sculpture related to Forestry Commission, and finance for sculptors those of the live trees. Goldsworthy is interested a particular place was a minor issue when that to work there using its timber has been available in what is like nature yet different. place was an art gallery; the concern then was the since 1977. It is open to the public and a leaflet The relation of the sculpture to its surround- space it needed rather than the place it was in. locates each sculpture on the many miles of for- commission, Seven Spires, takes this into account, ings is not a stable one, because, as time passes, But for Goldsworthy the character of the place is est track. But Grizedale is not a conventional not just because the seven sets of clustered pine living trees grow and are ultimately felled, while the core of the brief he gives himself. How then, sculpture park, because its main purpose is to trunks grouped in tall pyramid forms are made dead ones slowly decay away. Most of Seven Spires the issue becomes, can sculpture relate to forestry, grow timber rather than provide the opportunity from the forest’s surplus timber. Seven Spires is can be seen properly only close-to, inside the or to archaeology? Tying these questions together to view art in the open air. Goldsworthy’s first part of the forest and not, like most sculpture, ei- wood, and a possible view is to look up the spires is another, the relationship of the sculptor today ther distinct from its surroundings or to be looked from close to the base, from where one can share 6 to landscape, which has traditionally been much 5. The formidable at only from outside. One spire is easily visible Goldsworthy’s sense that there exists ‘within a more the concern of painters than sculptors. role of light in from the track and its prominence signals the pres- pine wood... and almost desperate growth and en- Goldsworthy’s outdoor While sculpture has been thought of as per- sculptures is evident ence of the whole work. But to find the other spires ergy driving upward’. He makes an analogy with from the following manent and outside time, Goldsworthy’s works entry: Bright, cold, and experience the sculpture in its entirety the change: the forest projects gradually decay, while sunny. A jewel of a day. viewer must leave the track and walk in among the Bitterly disappointed the earthworks will, initially at least, grow, as at ice ball being trees. weeds and undergrowth cover them. Sculpture smashed overnight Goldsworthy’s sculpture helps to form a new by some body. I traditionally represents the imposed will of the don’t mind things relationship between spectator and sculptor, be- maker, but Goldsworthy is a collaborator with going once they have cause the viewer is inside the sculpture, among reached their peak but nature, interested in the way wind and rain form today’s atmosphere the spires and trees. Experienced from the inside, and light would have turned a good work sculpture loses its character as monument, some- into a fantastic one. thing external to the spectator and claiming a kind (Hampstead Heath, Sketchbook 13: 29 of superiority because it is special and outside the December 1985). flow of time. In avoiding monumentality, however, 6. See H. Moore, “Sculpture in the Open Goldsworthy’s sculptures do not forego grandeur. Air,” 1955, in P. James, From the time of the eighteenth-century con- ed., Henry Moore on Sculpture, 1966, p.99. templative garden, furnished with sculpted busts and figures, to the Battersea Park sculpture exhibi- tions of the 1950’s, and the installation in the same

Stacked ice decade of the Kind and Queen and other sculptures sound of cracking of Henry Moore on Scottish moors, there has been a Stacked stone Hampstead Heath, London Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales tradition in England of using nature as sympathet- ic background for sculpture. Goldsworthy goes be- yond this. When selecting the site for Seven Spires,

40 Environmental Sculptures 41 Andrew Causey Pebbles around a hole Kinagashima-Cho, Japan

Gothic architecture, the surge of energy through columns and the convergence and resolution at he point of the vault, in the way D. H. Lawrence describes his feeling for the inside of Lincoln cathedral in The Rainbow (‘Here the stone leapt up from the plain of earth, leapt up in a manifold clustered desire each time, up, away from the hori- zontal earth’).7 Romanticism has commonly associ- ated the Gothic with the forest, and Goldsworthy Icicles Park Wood in Dorset, made in September 1986, thick ends dipped in snow then water is in this sense Romantic. He is not, however, a na- held until frozen together arose from an approach to the furniture maker ture mystic searching for some vaguely conceived Scaur Water, Dumfriesshire John Makepeace from Common Ground, a group pannish spirit of the woods, nor a Symbolist in the dedicated to heightening awareness of landscape sense that he sees an image, such as a spire, as and encouraging local initiatives to commission the fixed expression of an idea, such as religion. sculpture in rural places. Makepeace was start- Richard Long has commented on the way ing up a School of Woodland Industry there, one art’s changing role in society has made direct com- of individual expression, it cannot be assumed of its purposes being to develop economic uses for parisons between his own interest in stone circles that forms will have the same meaning as in the timber thinnings in the surrounding woods, which and ostensibly similar manifestations in the past past, or that a common understanding of forms had been taken over from the Forestry Commis- dangerous: ‘Stonehenge and all the circles in Brit- will exist. Goldsworthy’s reactions are instinctive, sion. Sue Clifford and Angela King of Common ain... came about from a completely different cul- his sculpture has meaning for him, which may or Ground describe the project in detail in this book, ture... They were social, religious art. I make my may not be widely shared; what matters is that but something needs to be said about the place of work as an individual.’ If art is now a matter such analogies should be felt and not imposed.8 Hooke in Goldsworthy’s work as a whole. Goldsworthy’s second Grizedale project, Grizedale offers public access, but an element Sidewinder, made in May 1985, and conceived as a 7. Artist’s statement, of secrecy surrounds the sculptures there, which span, which would have been out of scale, and March 1987. 9 contrast to Seven Spires, is a horizontal ‘serpent’. 8. This image was are often remote and have to be searched for. would have made the work too dominant over its From being a single log at one end, the body of published as a card by The entrance to Hooke Park, from an unclassified environment for the sculptor who had brought art Common Ground to the sculpture was built up by butting together an record his residency road away from the village, is also off the beaten and nature into such close liaison at Grizedale. As there. increasing number of sections of wood side by side, 9. Quoted in Davies track, but it is a public place and the sculptures an artist who, in the course of the eighties, made so that it grows in width down the length of the 1984, p. 151. are markers, registering passage from one kind sculpture varying in length from two feet to a 10. Andy Goldsworthy, body. By contrast with Seven Spires, Sidewinder is unpublished notes, of land, a public road, to another, a wood which is quarter of a mile, Goldsworthy has become aware close to the ground, and, as against the calm gran- December 1988. privately owned but with public right of access. of problems of size in relation to scale. He has suc- 11. Evident in deur of the previous work, the rapid succession of photographs taken Entrances and thresholds have symbolic value, cessfully created sculptures of large size by keep- arches that form the body of the new one is tense during construction acting as focal points and introducing what is be- ing them in scale with people and with their envi- (Nesbitt 1989, p. 55). with energy. It has some resemblance to the rise yond. Making the circles out of curved, and there- ronments. The problem was acute at Hooke where and fall of the old stone walls left from when the fore commercially low-value, timber, was a refer- the large span would have created something like forest was moorland and still to be seen among the ence to the school inside, part of whose function a twentieth-century triumphal arch, and Golds- trees. But individual imaginations, searching for was to find new ways of using low-grade wood. worthy opted for two smaller circles on either side associations, may prefer to see it as serpent, the Goldsworthy’s original proposal, for a single of the road entrance. emblem of the dark energy of the forest encoun- circle enclosing the roadway, involved a fifty-foot Goldsworthy’s next public commission, the tered in the more remote part of Grizedale that Lambton Earthwork near Chester Street in Coun- Goldsworthy chose for Sidewinder. ty Durham, made in December 1988, faced him Goldsworthy’s third large scale project, with a different type of location and size of project. the two wood circles at the entrance to Hooke He was commissioned jointly by Northern Arts and Sustrans, a company specializing in finding new uses for abandoned railway tracks, to build an earthwork on a section of the disused line be- tween Consett and Sunderland. His new site was in an area scarred by the decline of heavy indus-

42 Environmental Sculptures 43 Andrew Causey I have lived for moat of the time within sight of the Lake District, although this is due more to circum- stances than any great wish to be there. The moun- tains have become important to me not only to visit and work but as a place by which I orientate myself. It has taken on the significance that all mountains, hills, mounds and single trees have to people living nearby. It has become a landmark which creates a sense of presence and location, defining the sur- Slate arch rounding landscape. the clouds and touching snow when I thought win- made over two days fourth attempt Many of the early works on Morecambe Bay ter was over. If there is such a thing in my work as Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales were made in response to the space over the bay a range of locations that have influenced the scale and the distant mountains which enclosed that of my work the Lake District must rate as the place space. I often made holes in rocks, ice, snow which most instrumental in causing the largest things I usually opened out into and examined that space. have made. The mountains were bait for the eye. I think the Lake District is a place where some When I first visited the Lake District I was of my basic interests were formed–a love of the last impressed by the mass and space–and the things remaining patch of snow, becoming aware of the that made that space active. It offered new experi- mass of energy of a mountain culminating at the ences on a massive scale, being able to walk up into peak manifesting itself in many of my works with tapered rocks, icicles and most recently seven 35- 47’ tall pine spires at Grizedale Forest in the Lake District–my first permanent work. Having said all this I have to add that I am still very committed to the common place. My way of working developed in small works on the outskirts of Leeds. I have worked in ever smaller woods since and for a time worked under the Big dipper at More- cambe. I can work anywhere there is growth and I enjoy adapting to different environments–the Lake District is one of several places that are of special importance to me.

The Lake District 1988 Leaves polished, creased made in shadow of tree which they fell pinned to the ground by thorns Le Jardin Massey, France

Broken pebbles scratched white with another stone St. Abbs, The Scottish Borders

156 157 The Lake District Rhododendron leaves creased to catch the hazy to bright light held to the ground with thorns Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Dandelions Japanese maple newly flowered leaves stiched togehter none as yet turned to seed to make a foating chain undamaged by wind or rain the next day it became a hole a grass verge... supported underneath Yorkshire Sculpture Park by a woven briar ring Ouchiyama-Mura, Japan

158 159 The Lake District Thin covering of snow melting rolled a snowball quickly... Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Broken Ice remains of several failed works laid in sun and shadow quickly melting Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Calm overcast laid iris blades on pond pinned together with thorns filled in five sections Yorkshire Sculpture Park

160 161 The Lake District Impulse 8 (Galerie Lohrl, Monchengladbach) 1985.

City Limits, 2–8 August 1985, p. 69.

“Bisen und Bierflaschen,” Rhein Post, 24 October 1985.

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Rain sun snow hail mist calm: Photoworks by Andy Goldsworthy S. Oshima, T. Friedman and F. Nanjo, Andy Goldsworthy Moun- (The Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture, Leeds City Art tain and Coast Autumn into Winter Japan 1987 (Gallery Takagi, Gallery and Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland) Nagoya) 1988. 1985. Camoflage (Scottish Arts Council) 1988.

Lancashire South of the Sands: The Contemporary Landscape (Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museums) 1988.

101 102 Bibliography