Richard Long
b. 1945, United Kingdom
River Avon Driftwood Spiral, 1981
Wood, in 80 parts
Diameter 330 cm
River Avon Driftwood Spiral is a spiral of wood laid in a clockwise direction, made up of driftwood picked up by Richard Long on the banks of the River Avon below Leigh Woods, near the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. Following Long’s set of instructions for arrangement, each piece of wood is placed on the floor in a random order on its flattest and most stable side, lengthwise following the line of the spiral, two spaces of its own length in front of the preceding piece. Part of Long’s multiple driftwood floor-works under the title River Avon Driftwood, the work is shaped by a careful convergence between abstract human ideas and sheer natural force: while Long has determined a formal order to the general form of this floor-work, the natural shape of each piece of driftwood affects the specific look of each spiral, giving each floor-work in this series a unique appearance despite their same material source. In this way, Long captures our human tendency to make sense of the natural world despite its unimaginable grandiosity.
Photo: Jack Hems
Richard Long (b. 1945) is a British artist, known as a pioneering figure in land art. His revolutionary work A Line Made by Walking (1967) turned time, space and distance into new subjects for his art, spearheading the idea that art can be the process of creating the art itself. Since then, Long has continued to reflect on his experiences of places across various geographic realms, where his recordings and measurements taken in these locations code for both original ideas and powerful, condensed narratives. His practice continues to transform how sculpture can be viewed through his use of materials that run alternative to “traditional” sculptural materials at the time, such as rock and earth often sourced from quarries near the exhibition sites. A winner of the Turner Prize in 1989 and the only artist to have been shortlisted four times for the award, Long’s works have been presented as major solo exhibitions in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2023, M Leuven, Leuven (2021), and the De Pont Museum, Tilburg (2019), among others.
