Richard Long CBE RA

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Description

Richard Long CBE RA
Cornwall Slate Line
Cornwall slate
7.5 by 260 by 2530cm.
3 by 102 1/4 by 996in.

Provenance

Acquired from the artist by the present owner in 2000

Exhibited

London, Tate Britain, Turner Prize, 1990
Lismore, Lismore Castle, Richard Long, 2006 , illustrated in the catalogue

Literature

Richard Long et al., Richard Long: Walking in Circles, New York, 1991, p. 168

Catalogue Note

During the 1960s Bristol-born artist Richard Long became associated with the emergence of a new genre of art that would come to be known as Land Art. Artists engaging with Land Art were inspired by natural processes and used organic substances in their works, typically expressing care and consideration for the environment.

Cornwall Slate Line comprises naturally irregular blocks of slate sourced from Cornwall arranged in a neat linear form. The simplicity of the arrangement is typical of Long’s attention to balance and harmony. Long observes further: ‘you could say that my work is also a balance between the patterns of nature and the formalism of human abstract ideas like lines and circles. It is where my human characteristics meet the natural forces and matters of the world, and this is really the kind of subject of my work (cited in Richard Long: Walking in Circles (exhibition catalogue), Hayward Gallery, London, 1991, p. 250).

Cornwall Slate Line was originally conceived for the 1990 Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain), London, along with two other works Norfolk Flint Circle and White Water Line. In 2010, the work was placed in the grounds of Chatsworth House as part of the permanent collection of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. Its move from the inside of a gallery to the Derbyshire countryside brings a sense of conclusion to the historical trajectory of the work and pays homage to the artist’s continual source of inspiration: his walks in the country. As the artist himself observes, ‘the outdoor and indoor works are complementary, although I would have to say that nature, the landscape, the walking, is at the heart of my work’ (quoted in Richard Long: São Paulo Bienal (exhibition catalogue), The British Council, London, 1994).