Richard Long's practice involves photography, painting and sculpture and is most commonly regonised for his large scale land art pieces. In relation to my current studies for the outside the white cube module, several of Long's works are in response to walks which he has made, as with my documentation of my derives Long incorporates photographs, maps and texts detailing the time and location of a particular walk. Materials found on his walks are often used to fashion sculptures or to manipulate a landscape, very much like the nature of land artist Andy Goldsworthy.

Simon Starling - cos I love the little fella

Bugger if I know what this piece was called - it had a REALLY long word for a name but I can't find it anywhere online, and I can't find the exhibition note from the gutted out Glaswegian bath house where I saw it exhibited as documentation.

It goes like this - Simon Starling drags up this boat from the bottom of a loch (at least I think he drags it up - it could well be that he acquired it in a less remarkable way). Then he sets out into the loch, fuelling the boat's steam motor with pieces of wood cut from the boat's own hull. Of course, eventually there isn't enough of the boat left and it disappears into the murky depths of the loch.

I love it. I think I love anything to do with water. I'm starting to have ideas about the river for this module. May have to get my brother to bring the canoe up here.

Jeremy Deller

The Battle Of Orgreave (2001)

Here's where I regurgitate what I learned from my Intertextuality essay.

Deller's work rarely (if ever) goes in galleries. Documentation does, but not the work itself (like much of Richard Long's work, Sarah!). A lot of his work is so collaborative that his collaboration makes up most of the work, and it is often temporary/performative so it defies exhibition. The Battle of Orgreave is a good example - a massive re-enactment of one of the most violent clashes between miners and police in the 1984/5 miners' strike. It's actually easy to miss that he's an artist at all, and his work still stands up if you forget that it's art.

ESSAY QUOTE!

For Deller, the ‘art’ side of his work takes a back seat to his sense of social responsibility. Or to look at it another way, the art is so closely entwined with the social or political in his work that if you negate the art it doesn’t leave a gaping hole in your experience or interpretation. The participants in Orgreave didn’t need it to be an art event for it to be significant, although as Deller states, it wouldn’t have happened without him [he says that being an artist puts you in an interesting position where you get to do things that wouldn't happen normally]. It takes little effort to conceive of any of Deller’s works removed from the art sphere and for them to retain all credibility as socially involved, dialogical, if sometimes a little wacky, public endeavours.

So I reckon Deller's work is so far outside the white cube (as a concept) that it's only just art. Or you could argue that it's more like art than any other gallerised stuff. It's definitely constructive, which I fucking love.

Richard Long

I am looking into the work of Richard Long, simply because he is an artist that I have always admired, yet not had the chance to look into in detail. I like the way that he takes predetermined walks through the countryside and makes works as he goes along. These works are always made from natural materials. This is something close to my own heart as I try to use and take reference from nature as much as possible for my own work.
I like the way that he incorporates natural form in sometimes unnatural patterns, for example perfectly straight lines.
I am going to look in more detail at Richard Long’s work for my ‘Outside The White Cube’ project.
I have included here an image of Long’s piece entitled ‘Tame Buzzard Line’.