Anya Contreras
Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy is a
British sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture
and land art. He is associated with environmental art and land art movements.
From a young age, Goldsworthy worked on farms as a laborer and has likened the
repetitive quality of farm tasks to the routine making of his sculptures: “A
lot of my work is like picking potatoes; you have to get into the rhythm of
it.”
Andy Goldsworthy uses
exclusively natural materials, saying, “My remit is to work with nature as a
whole.” He works with resources such as ice, snow, leaves, bark, petals,
stones, feathers, and twigs to understand the energy running through landscapes
that he also recognizes within himself. Holes are a common element in his works
because he finds holes to be a literal method in getting beneath the surface of
natural materials in order to explore their intrinsic energetic properties. His
greatest inspiration is the flow in nature; specifically of water. Flowing
water, in the form of either rivers or oceans, serves as a natural force that
informs the elements of repetition and concepts of cycles and time in his work.
He is famous for interpreting the subtle shifts of place and time through his
work. He understands that nature is constantly in a state of change, and this
change is the key to understanding. The transience in his works is what he
observes in nature. For his ephemeral works, Goldsworthy often uses only his
bare hands, teeth, and found tools to prepare and arrange the materials, even
finding gloves to reduce his sensitivity to his process. Some of his more
permanent sculptures, such as “Roof”, “Stone River” and “Three Cairns” employed
the use of some machine tools. Observation and intimate interaction are
inseparable from Goldsworthy’s work. When he interacts with nature as a
material, it transcends surface and form into an exploration of the processes
of life within and around it. When these pieces are left alone, these processes
continue to work upon them.
Photography plays a
crucial role in Goldsworthy’s art due to its ephemeral and transient state.
According to Goldsworthy, “Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a
cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the
work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope
is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit.”
