I was fortunate enough to see Andy Goldsworthy retrospective at the National Gallery of Scotland earlier this year.

Most will be familiar with his work, at least on a cursory level – leaf paintings, rock stacks,  works on site made in-situ with found materials.  The retrospective is a reflection on 50 years of artistic endeavour, a lifetime attempting to reflect the beauty and fragility of nature.

I was familiar enough with his works, but by no means exhaustively and was astounded by the depth, care and craft of his works shown from hedge crawl – a video of him literally climbing slowly along the length of a Yew hedge on a frosty winters sunrise, to a black holes – holes dug in unusual places with no edge/depth.

This post is not a review of his work; you should look it up and seek it out if you are interested.  His website has a lovely record of projects  but there were three works that felt particularly poignant:

Red Flags

The Rockefeller centre in New York has a series of flag poles each with a flag of the countries of the United Nations.  Asked to prepare a work for the centre, he collected the reddest earth that could be found from each of the 50 US states and then stained 50 white flags with it.

The result is a stunning.  Stripped of emblem and motif, the flags hang quietly in their different shades of Ochre, expressing more profoundly the differences and connection of the place than any man-made design could.

‘flags are symbols of what separates people as much as what unites them – wars are fought over them.  It’s an anti-flag protest in many ways – AG

Midsomer’s Snowballs

A series of works where in winter, at different places in Yorkshire, Andy rolled a number of large snowballs – 2m in diameter.  The snowballs gathered pieces of eh ground around them, depending on where they were rolled.  Winter berries, pine cones, rocks, twigs, whatever was in the path of collection.

These were then put into deep freeze and then distributed around the streets of London on Midsomer’s day. They slowly melted over a number of days, an object in the wrong place at the wrong time, leaving behind their seasonal cargo on the streets.

‘some of the snowballs have a kind of animal energy.  Not just because of the materials inside them, but the way they appear caged, captured’ – AG

Hanging Stones

A walk in Yorkshire with a series of 9 buildings – existing structures re-built and modified to be installations in themselves. The walk is currently 6 miles, with more buildings to be added.  The journey is all part of the work – there are occasional markers and navigation is apparently not easy, but that is the point.
The exhibition showed some sketches of his ideas for the buildings, but no photographs.  I haven’t looked any up on the internet either.

Next time in the UK, I’ll book to walk the Hanging Stones.  The idea of a ‘quest’ is exciting and the sketches are just enough to plant the seed of anticipation.