Richard Long
Richard Long has been in the vanguard of conceptual art in Britain since he created A Line Made by Walking over half a century ago in 1967, while still a student. This photograph of the path left by his feet in the grass, a fixed line of movement, established a precedent that art could be a journey. Through this medium of walking, time, space and distance became new subjects for his art. From that time he expanded his walks to wilderness regions all over the world, including a walk in the Alps that was documented by his first text work for the seminal exhibition of Minimal and Conceptual works entitled When Attitude Becomes Form at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969. After 1969, Long began making journeys and sculptures in wilderness places all around the world. In the 1980s, Long began making new types of mud works using handprints applied directly to the wall. He also continued to make large sculptures of lines and circles from slate, driftwood, footprints or stone, often sourced from quarries near the exhibition sites. Long mediates on his experience of these places, from mountains through to deserts, shorelines, grasslands, rivers and snowscapes, according to archetypal geometric marks and shapes, made by his footsteps alone or gathered from the materials of the place. These walks and temporary works of passage are recorded with photographs, maps and text works, where measurements of time and distance, place names and phenomena are vocabulary for both original ideas and powerful, condensed narratives.
Richard Long was born in Bristol, UK in 1945 and he lives and works between London and Bristol. He studied at the West of England College of Art, Bristol (1962–65), then St Martin’s School of Art, London (1966–68). Major solo exhibitions include Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2023); M Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (2021); Chateau La Coste, Provence, France (2021); De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands (2019); Fondation CAB, Brussels, Belgium (2018); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, UK (2017); Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2015); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2010); Tate Britain, London, UK (2009); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK (2007); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA (2006); National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan (1996); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA (1994); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA (1986). He represented Britain at the 37th Venice Biennale (1976) and won the Turner Prize in 1989. He received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture (1990), has been elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2001), awarded Japan’s Praemium Imperiale in the field of sculpture (2009), made a CBE in 2013 and was knighted in the 2018 Honours List.
Recent, current and forthcoming projects
Exhibitions
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Patternmaker's Maze
20 July – 12 October 2024
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Patternmaker's Maze
20 July – 12 October 2024
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Matter as Actor
3 May – 24 June 2023
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Richard Long: Drinking the rivers of Dartmoor
16 November 2022 – 4 February 2023
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Selected works in London
8 December 2020 – 12 January 2021
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Richard Long: FROM A ROLLING STONE TO NOW
6 March – 3 July 2020
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Richard Long: ORIZABA TO URIQUE / RIVER DE...
7 February – 7 March 2020
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Richard Long
20 September – 26 October 2019
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Richard Long: Circle to Circle
11 May – 23 June 2018
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Richard Long
23 May – 12 July 2014
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Daniel Buren, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long and...
6 May – 31 May 1980
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Richard Long
9 October – 9 November 1979
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Richard Long: Outback
2 May – 20 May 1978
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Richard Long
21 May – 18 June 1977
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Richard Long: Stones
24 June – 26 June 1976
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Richard Long
1 November – 30 November 1974
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Richard Long
23 January – 24 February 1973