Exhibition

Richard Long & Simon Starling

4 Oct 2008 – 23 Nov 2008

Regular hours

Saturday
12:00 – 17:00
Sunday
12:00 – 17:00
Wednesday
12:00 – 17:00
Thursday
12:00 – 17:00
Friday
12:00 – 17:00

Cost of entry

FREE

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Spike Island

Bristol, United Kingdom

Address

Travel Information

  • 506 via Temple Meads
  • Bristol Temple Meads
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Richard Long and Simon Starling

About

Spike Island, a place of production and exhibition for contemporary art and design in Bristol, has commissioned new work by Richard Long and Simon Starling specifically for our outstanding new galleries. This is the first time these Turner Prize winning artists have exhibited together. Both works are site-specific and driven by interaction with the Bristol landscape. RICHARD LONG Bristol-born Richard Long last exhibited here in his home town in 2000 in the Royal West of England Academy. The River Avon is a key part of Long's work: the vast majority of his wall drawings in private collections and museums around the world are made using Avon mud. For Spike Island's main gallery, Long will create two large scale mud drawings in his last show before a major survey of his life's work at Tate Modern in 2009. These new wall drawings are a magnificent response to the gallery's nine metre high ceiling, recently described by Richard Cork as 'one of the most epic art spaces in Britain' (Financial Times, 2007). To accompany this new work, Long has selected an intimate text piece written by him in 1990 which will be distributed to visitors as a free, limited edition poster work. SIMON STARLING — Rockraft Against the backdrop of Long's drawings, Simon Starling presents a new commission comprising of two roughly cut but apparently identical lumps of rock displayed on large white plinths. One of these rocks, a ton and a half of locally sourced inferior oolite has made an epic journey on its plinth which in this case doubled as a simple raft. Propelled by the considerable power of September's spring tide, the rock made its way 5 miles from Avonmouth into Bristol's historic Floating Habour. The Avon has the second highest tide in the world, often reaching 14.2 metres. Following this initial tidal voyage, the rock has then made a subsequent journey, its rough-hewn form momentarily ‘dematerialised' into a stream of digital data and transposed in minute detail onto another block of stone using a computer-guided milling machine - its almost science fiction-like, high-tech transposition playfully parodying the simplicity and economy of the original rocks river run. An important exchange is created between the two artists within the gallery space:- Long, whose work has influenced so many, an artist from a pioneering, even iconic generation, and Starling, an exceptional artist whose practice could not have formed as it has without the impact of Long and his peers. These are artists with differing methods of engagement with landscape, their interests ranging from personal experience, to the forces of energy constructed through nature and includes the use of the most highly sophisticated technologies available today.

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