Richard Long
and Hamish Fulton are not landscape photographers, more artists whose work is
in the landscape and their journey to that art. Richard Long often makes
different forms of art be it, a photograph, or map and text or a sculpture.
What he creates in the landscape often reflects what he feels it needs; if the
landscape needs a line of stones or a circle of twigs he will make it. The
landscape might need a straight line down the middle, inviting the viewer onto
his journey (they are traces of staying and passing, the straight line is movement, whereas the circles are a form of staying). There is no special reason, aesthetic or political to make
his art, he just feels as an artist, that he has a desire to make it. In a way,
his work is designed to be impermanent. The fact that the sun captures the way
the grass has been trampled, speaks to our own existence on this planet in that
we are fleeting moment in time.
Hamish
Fulton works along the same lines, in fact the essay written inside the
catalogue ‘An Object Cannot Compete with an Experience’ (a 14 day walking trip
to the mountains of Japan with a company of people) sums up both of these
artists styles:
“Walking is many things to
many people,
From essential transport
and pilgrimage to recreation
As an artist
I have chosen to make art
about
The physical experience of
walking
My walks can be
Short and ritualistic or
quite long and demanding
They can be alone or with
a group
I can walk from my
doorstep
Or from the ground of an
international flight
Walking is spiritual not
material
And in theory at least
The resulting artworks
could be produced in any medium
From a frosted glass
window text
To an expedition video.
In the course of
travelling I have noted
The following
philosophical propositions
An object cannot compete with
an experience
(There are no words in
nature)
Walking into the distance
beyond imagination
(Walks are like clouds
they come and go)
The price I pay for not
mimicking nature
Is that I am able to
recover all my walks in words
(Written words in the
artwork
Can describe verbal
silence on a walk)
Walking transforms,
Walking is magic
(A walk must be
experienced it cannot be imagined)"
Notes and Images from: Richard Long:R.H. Fuchs
Essay from: An Object Cannot Compete with an Experience (Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, UEA, Norwich, 16 Feb to 29 April 2001)
