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The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years review – a wild walk between life, death and sheep-shearing
Rural life hits you in the face like the stink of cow dung as soon as you step into the Royal Scottish Academy. Andy Goldsworthy has laid a sheepskin rug up the classical gallery's grand staircase – very luxurious, except it's made from the scraps thrown away after shearing, stained blue or red with farmers' marks, all painstakingly stitched together with thorns. This is the Clarkson's Farm of art retrospectives, plunging today's urbanites into the raw sadness and beauty, the violence and slow natural cycles of the British countryside. Goldsworthy may love nature but he doesn't sentimentalise it. At the top of the stairs there's a screen and through its gaps you glimpse the galleries beyond. It feels mystical and calming, until you realise it's made of rusty barbed wire strung between two of the building's columns that serve as tightly-wound wire rollers. It made me think of Magnus Mills' darkly hilarious rural novel about hapless fencers, The Restraint of Beasts. Later you can relax looking at seductive, purple abstract watercolours – until you discover they are made with hare's blood and snow. The show is titled Fifty Years, which might make anyone feel old, and Goldsworthy may have been goaded by it. He fills the gallery's main floor with new and recent work, while you'll find an archive of his 20th-century career downstairs. But how could he exhibit his past achievements except in photos and video? Since the 1970s Goldsworthy, who was born in Cheshire and grew up on the outskirts of Leeds, has been making art with nature, in nature, even for nature, since some of his interventions could only be experienced by birds or sheep before the colour faded from a rubbed stone or a mat of leaves decayed. Other outdoor works are more permanent, using dry stone walling to make sheepfolds and little houses in sculpture parks and nature reserves. In Cumbria you'll find his monumental Grizedale Wall snaking between the trees. What makes this a work of art? It's simple. There's no practical reason a farmer would place an elegantly curving stone line in a forest. But by making it, Goldsworthy insists you ask what art is. He's a peasant dadaist. In photos of an early action he throws bunches of sticks in the sky to see how they fall – a fresh air reworking of Marcel Duchamp's 3 Standard Stoppages in which chance determined how a string fell. An entertaining video shows what happened when Goldsworthy brought a giant snowball from the Scottish Highlands to London's Smithfield meat market in June 2000: the meatpackers have fun moving it about with a forklift. Inside the snow, the artist gently explains, is a core of hair from Highland cattle. He's not saying meat is murder so much as what we consume is divorced from any sense of natural life. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion It is our connection with nature he wants to reawaken, not in a quiet contemplative way but as a shock. Earth and blood are the same, he suggests in the most powerful room. It is dominated by a whole wall made of cracked red clay that he collected by hand in Dumfriesshire's Lowther Hills. The epic scale and fiery colour seem more American than Scottish. Goldsworthy shows you this is a big country, too. The work is called Red Wall – but I don't think it's a political joke. The redness is all. In the same room a three-screen video records an alchemical performance in which Goldsworthy rubs a rock in a Dumfriesshire river to reveal a layer of iron-rich pure redness; the red appears as bloody clouds in the green water. Iron reddens the earth and reddens our blood. We are part of nature's cycle. Our bodies will return to the earth – at least, if you live in rural Dumfriesshire as Goldsworthy does. When you die there you still get buried, in a churchyard, according to Goldsworthy's grand project Gravestones, for which he has taken photographs of Dumfriesshire churchyards under stormy skies. Goldsworthy's 'gravestones' are not headstones but the pebbles and rocks that have to be removed when fresh graves are dug. He wants to create a vast monumental field with them, to show that there is animate nature and inanimate nature – blood and stone. We return to the earth, leaving our imperishable elements. He tests his idea in an installation here. Stones from graveyards form a continuous floor, like a rocky seashore, completely filling a room except for a narrow walkway. The stones have literally been cut short, neatly sliced through, to form a straight boundary between the artwork and the observer. It's typical of this artist's poetic precision. You wonder how he cut the stones in two so neatly, and accurately measured the perfect line they make. Then it hits you. This is the straight smooth absolute line between life and death. That's true in the country, and the city, too. Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years is at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh from 26 July until 2 November 2025
The Herald Scotland
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Head along to the Lughnasadh Music and Art Festival
Head to Forgan Arts Centre for an afternoon and evening of live music and family friendly art activities in the centre's lush grounds. Following the success of last year's festival, Lughnasadh returns with an even bigger line-up featuring Scottish Album of the Year Award winners Kathryn Joseph and Sacred Paws; Mercury Prize nominee BBC Introducing Scottish Act of the Year Becky Sikasa and many others. Kathryn Joseph (Image: Kathryn Joseph) The Garden 1-30 August. Entry free. Stills, 23 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1BP. Artist Sian Davey and her son Luke spent three years transforming her garden into an immersive wildflower haven during which time their garden wall became a community space for shared stories. Inviting others in, they managed to capture moments of reflection, love and connection which lead to the birth of The Garden - a place for heartbreak, joy and everything in between. Coburg House Summer Open Studios 1-3 August. Entry free. Coburg House Art Studios, 15 Coburg Street, Edinburgh, EH6 6ET. This summer Coburg House [[Art]] Studios marks a major milestone - 20 years since it opened its doors to the public for its renowned biannual Open Studios events. Coburg House is home to over 70 artists, designers and makers and across its four floors of working studios, visitors can discover a thriving hub of creativity that has become one of Scotland's leading artist collectives. Andy Goldsworthy - Fifty Years 26 July-2 November. Entry free. Scottish National Gallery, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL. Taking over the upper and lower galleries in the Royal Scottish Academy building for the summer is Andy Goldsworthy's Fifty Years exhibition. There's over 200 works such as photographs, sculptures and expansive installations as well as several major new works that have been created onsite specifically for this exhibition. Into the Wild 26-27 July. Entry free. Leith Makers, 105 Leith Walk, Edinburgh, EH6 8NP. Featuring work from three Edinburgh-based artists, this exhibition explores the natural, mystical and dark aspects of the world around us. Dani's work explores the relationships animals have with their natural environment while Dee's work imagines creatures tasked with curating natural spaces and keeping their inhabitants happy and healthy. Jim on the other hand is influenced by the darker, more feral parts of nature. Switch Track 26 July-9 August. Entry free. Reid Gallery, Glasgow School of Art, 164 Renfrew Street, G3 6RQ. Victoria Morton – Switch Track (Image: Victoria Morton) The period between 1995 to 2025 represents 30 years of painting since artist Victoria Morton graduated from The Glasgow School of Art, with this exhibition featuring a selection of works from that spell. It carefully draws upon sketchbook materials, paintings and mixed media works from different points in time. There's painting, sculptural assemblages, photography and sound work which covers the variety of Morton's practice. Shifting Surfaces 28 July-11 October. Entry free. Dovecot Studios, 10 Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1LT. Immerse yourself in the inspirations and collaborations between Victoria Crowe and Dovecot Studios and mark a major milestone in the career of one of Scotland's most distinguished contemporary artists. Journey through a rich relationship of texture and textiles while overlooking Dovecot's studio where these masterpieces were created. Millais In Perthshire 26 July-30 April 2027. Entry free. Perth Art Gallery, 78 George Street, Perth, PH1 5LB. New for 2025, this exhibition is a private collection of rarely seen artworks and personal belongings of prominent Victorian artist John Everett Millais and his Perth-born wife Euphemia 'Effie' Chalmers Gray. As part of a long-term loan from the artist's great grandson, this display explores the profound connections between Millais and Perthshire, a landscape that inspired several of his most celebrated works. We are the Witches, We are, Hear 1-30 August. Entry free. The House of Smalls, 103 Henderson Row, Stockbridge, EH3 5BB. Discover textile artwork from 70 female artists who aim to use their craft to challenge, disturb and disrupt. Running throughout the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the exhibition explores the concept of the witch as female divinity, female ferocity and female transgression. Eden 26 July-11 August. Entry free. The Briggait, 141 Bridgegate, Glasgow, G1 5HZ. Rooted in the language of nature, Michelle Campbell's work uses the natural world as a source and platform to navigate and express her own experience of the world. The exhibition charts the meeting points between mind and matter, feeling and form, chaos and clarity and invites viewers to enter not only into the natural imagery but into a way of seeing, and sensing that is fluid, raw and vivid.
