smallprojects

As hard as it might be to pin down, there is a straightforwardness about the work of Andy Goldsworthy, a quiet clarity that makes meaning out of sheer simplicity. His work will almost always be found physically within nature, if not certainly close to it. Commonly constructed by hand and not merely directed in its making, each work is meticulously assembled from the most obvious to the least noteworthy of found objects in the locality of its site and, in the manner of its expression, will subtly bring depth to our experience of its context. He brings nothing and removes nothing from each site, but for photographs he takes of each work in their passing, a beauty bound to the impermanence of its existence.

He makes gifts to the rivers and to the sea, makes arrangements of icicles and leaves as intimate relationships between the earth and its processes, casts colour into dark pools of water set in rock as if it were the most natural thing to be found. And each piece surprises upon first contact, by virtue of our disbelief that nature could have produced such arrangement. However, a second take then reveals those traces of the creative human touch.

Environmental art will be found in fair abundance these days, but few will approach the leaps of possibility, the intuitive and evolved work of this man for one simple reason: the work of Andy Goldsworthy is singularly contextual.