Richard Long Offsite Commission: Boyhood Line

About

Richard Long was born in Bristol and has lived locally since 1945. He spent his early years living in Clifton, and as a child he sought out the Downs, Avon Gorge and countryside close by. He has talked about the physical connection with nature and freedom that he felt as a boy playing in in these grassy, rocky places – the towpath, scree gullies and the woods of the gorge, of making campfires and toboggan runs when it snowed.

When studying at St Martin’s College in London, Long returned often to Bristol to make work, and several of the artists’ key early works were made on The Downs including Snowball Track, 1964, and England, 1968. The roots of Long’s engagement with the landscape can be seen in his connection to these places. They have remained areas of particular significance and he continues to work with local materials, such as mud from the River Avon, in works which are now realised across the world.

The new work, Boyhood Line, 2015, that Long will make with white limestone centres on a footpath close to Ladies Mile, a ‘desire line’ which has been made over many months by the footprints of people walking across the Downs, instinctively following the same path and establishing an unplanned path through the grass.

Richard Long is considered to be among the most important artists of his generation. In 1969, his work was included in the seminal exhibition ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ at the Kunsthalle Bern, for which he presented his first text work documenting a walk made in the Alps. He won the Turner prize in 1989, and represented Great Britain at the 37th Venice Biennale in 1976. He was awarded Japan’s Praemium Imperiale in the field of sculpture in 2009, and was made a CBE in 2013. He has made artworks in all five continents and has had over 250 solo exhibitions to date.