Earth Art, known as Land Art or Earthworks is a movement that utilises the natural landscape to create sculptures, on-site structures recorded as photographs, sometimes with text and other art forms that embody a direct relationship with the environment. The movement grew from Minimalism and Conceptualism and reflected the increasing concerns about the environmental damage being done to the Earth. This revolutionary approach to escape the gallery is how landscape artists came to reflect the cultural, political and social issues of the 1960s and 1970s, which are, unfortunately, even more relevant today.
Southampton City Art Gallery holds an important collection of works by Land artists and this exhibition brings together a selection of sculpture, drawing and photography by key practitioners of the Land Art movement, including Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy and Tony Cragg.
In 1987 Southampton Art Gallery commissioned Wessex Flint Line: pieces of white Hampshire flint are carefully placed to form a line 37 feet long by 5 feet wide. The Line will be re-made for this exhibition.
Long is the most celebrated of the British Land artists. He has been shortlisted for the Turner Prize three times and won the award in 1989.
Wessex Flint Line by Richard Long
© Richard Long. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2022
