Earth art, also referred to as Land art or Earthworks, is largely an American movement that uses the natural landscape to create site-specific structures, art forms, and sculptures. The movement was an outgrowth of Conceptualism and Minimalism: the beginnings of the environmental movement and the rampant commoditization of American art in the late 1960s influenced ideas and works that were, to varying degrees, divorced from the art market. In addition to the monumentality and simplicity of Minimalist objects, the artists were drawn to the humble everyday materials of Arte Povera and the participatory “social sculptures” of Joseph Beuys that stressed performance and creativity in any environment.
Richard Long
This formative piece was made on one of Long’s journeys to St Martin’s from his home in Bristol. Between hitchhiking lifts, he stopped in a field in Wiltshire where he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed this work, and recorded his physical interventions within the landscape.
Although this artwork underplays the artist’s corporeal presence, it anticipates a widespread interest in performative art practice. This piece demonstrates how Long had already found a visual language for his lifelong concerns with impermanence, motion and relativity.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/long-a-line-made-by-walking-p07149
Andrew Rogers
The “Rhythms of Life” project is the largest contemporary land art project in the world-12 Sites- in disparate exotic locations across 6 continents. Up to three Geoglyphs(each up to 200 metres x 200 meters) are located in each site.
Andrew Rogers have completed large scale Geoglyphs (land sculpture) site in Israel, Chile, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Iceland, China, India and Turkey, which are part of a chain of 12 Sites he is creating around the world. One site was completed in March 2006 outside the City of Melbourne, in Geelong and was commissioned in association with the Common wealth Games 2006. Individually and together the Geoglyphs form a unique art work stretching around the world, titled “The Rhythms of Life”.
Mick Petts
This prancing pony is a 200 metre long raised-earth artwork by Mick Petts that was completed over a period of 3 years. The earthwork is a homage to the pit pony, the last of which was retired in 1999. These animals were used to haul containers of coal in underground coal mines, and the locals later dubbed Mick Petts work ‘Sultan’ after a particularly famous local pit pony.
http://homeli.co.uk/sultan-the-pit-pony-200m-sculptural-earthwork-in-wales-by-mick-petts/
Mariele Neudecker: MORNING FOG IN THE, WATER,
ACRYLIC MEDIUM, FIBREGLASS, CELLULOSE Neudecker references both real and fictional environments in her work, which is concerned with exploring the territory between perception and representation.
She makes liberal use of the Northern European Romantic tradition, particularly in the series of vitrines containing three-dimensional images of landscape. These are immediately recognisable versions of pre-existing representations, generally Caspar David Friedrich, in which even the atmospheric effects of the paintings are mimicked by adding chemical solutions to the water filled tanks. The promise of the sublime is however negated by the visible artifice of the image.
From Helen Jones Presentation
Olafur Eliasson: The Weather Project, 2003
For the Tate’s Unilever series, Elaison made an illusory sun shine through mist in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall to huge popular acclaim.
A homage to man’s ability – and desire – to imitate nature, and an allusion to global warming, the installation awed and terrified in equal measures. The Telegraph’s Richard Dorment called it “a modern interpretation of one of John Martin’s or Francis Danby’s apocalyptic visions of the end of the world.”
From Helen Jones Presentation
Psychogeography
Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals”. It’s a complex topic that has developed quite a following in contemporary art
From Helen Jones Presentation
- A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
- Psycho Too by Will Self
Psychogeography (Pocket Essentials) by Merlin Coverly - Psychogeography by Will Self
Heather & Ivan Morison
Artists now work in a vastly expanded field, transcending traditional divisions within the creative arts, acting in collaboration with many other areas of creativity, thought and commerce, often directly addressing major societal questions of our time.
We are living in a period of great change in which opportunity and dignity are being stripped away from individuals and communities.
It is essential that we seize control of the forces of change to shape them into the future we want.
Paul Noble
Peter Finnermore
Peter Finnemore describes his artistic practice as involving a form of internal gardening, a cultivation of the dark damp soil of the imagination. The key themes of his work are situated around visual explorations based on Wales its landscape, its history, its culture,.
From Helen Jones Presentation
Olga Bergmann
An installation based on field studies conducted in Sligo Ireland in August 2005 For this project I built “visitor centres” on the two different sites and tried to make them attractive to animals in the surrounding areas.
From Helen Jones Presentation
Science, nature and the world of man is a trinity that is regularly combined in Olga Bergmann’s art. She makes extensive use of found
objects, handling them to different extents, incorporating them into her works and creating another reality from them.
Just as man uses science to transform nature, Olga Bergmann transforms the objects she uses in her workshttp://this.is/olga
George Shaw
Landscape artists once sought the sublime through the rendering of pastoral scenes, but Shaw, in common with many contemporary photographers, as well as English “kitchen sink” painters of an older generation, records the mundane, the quotidian and the overlooked. In doing so, he somehow renders the everyday mysterious.
From Helen Jones Presentation
Tania Kovats
Awst and Walther
- Ground to Sky
2014
Box trees, steel wire, aluminium tubes
Dimensions variable
Installation views: PSM, Berlin
http://www.rca.ac.uk/research-innovation/research/current-research/global-fertile-chaos/
Other Landscape Artists
- Robert Smithson: http://www.robertsmithson.com/ – Spiral Jetty
- Richard Long: http://www.richardlong.org/
- Andy Goldsworthy: http://www.goldsworthy.cc.gla.ac.uk/
- Chris Drury: http://chrisdrury.co.uk/
- James Turrell: http://www.pacegallery.com
- Michael Heizer: http://doublenegative.tarasen.net/
- Cornelia Konrads: http://www.cokonrads.de/index.php
- Hamish Fulton: https://www.mutualart.com/
- Suzi Gabik: http://www.writtenessays.net/suzi-gablik/
- David Nash: http://www.annelyjudafineart.co.uk/artists/david-nash
- Anam Anjetta:
- Maya Linn: http://www.biography.com/people/maya-lin-37259
- Buckminster Fuller Institute: https://www.bfi.org/
- Fibonacci Numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number
She's a Fine Artist 