For many of the most exciting, both when made and when being made, are those - like the ice arches and balanced rocks - that constantly court collapse into chaos. But seeing the sculptures for themselves offers thrills of its own. Photography selects the best views, light effects and backgrounds as well as only the best works. What then is the art work? The sculpture that so few ever see, or the photographs or sequence of photographs that are the public medium? The answer inevitably is both the sculptures and the photographs. ‘Goldsworthy is exceptional not just in the ephemerality of his sculpture, but in the prolific and unselfconscious way he creates it to be enjoyed purely for what it is, devoid of cultural resonance and pretension’ And then photographs are taken before works disappear - and often, more poignantly, to record their degradation and disappearance. Drifts of autumn leaves may be swept into red-brown swirls on bright green grass beach sand packed into sharp shadowed snaking ridges rocks or slivers of stone balanced in precarious stasis against swift-flowing stream or scudding sky leaves or pebbles colour-graded in Jines, transient or permanent fern leaves or feathers split down their central stems and pinned with thorns in flat arabesques or jagged flashes outlining black holes in the earth. The role of the artist is to roam the countryside looking for suggestive sites and materials and divining how best they might be used that day. Materials are selected and gathered on-site or close by to cause minimal disturbance, and arranged not only as their own characteristics suggest, but also to enhance the place and be enhanced by light and weather. Some sculptures are so ephemeral - such as rainbowed splashes, or loose clusters of thrown sticks - that they can be appreciated fully only in a prolonged instant frozen on film.įor these ephemeral works, Goldsworthy uses almost nothing other than recording equipment of camera and notebook, a sharp eye for potential sites and materials, and a robust preparedness to work long hours in all sorts of weather. Originals lodge only in the memory of the artist, and maybe of a few fortunate others. For most of us they exist only second hand in photographs. Though Andy Goldsworthy has made enormous and relatively durable works such as those in Grizedale Forest (AR September 1985), some of his sculptures are tiny, even inconspicuous, and the vast majority - like those described above - are ephemeral. A chain of leaves slides slowly over the still surface of a pond, or even floats away in a conga dance on the surface of a stream, casting a shadow that leaps over pebbles and bright winking wave patterns in a self-destructive and frenzied fandango. In another season, coloured leaves or petals stuck by spittle form chains or patches of contrasting colours that soon break up as the parts curl up or blow away. On the next day, thin sharp shards project as a cluster of small translucent sails from the cold waters into which they are steadily dissolving. Soon each face melts, shards slip past each other, and the whole crashes into a chaos of scattered fragments that slowly seep into the earth. January 1983Ĭrystalline shards of ice, precariously poised beside a pond, form an arch that glistens and sparkles in the sunlight. Ice points, held upright in muddy pond bottom, Helbeck, Cumbrial.
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