Since the late 1960s, Richard Long has made art by ‘walking’ through diverse landscapes and terrains from his home city of Bristol and its environs, to Ireland and Scotland, Alaska, Iceland, the Americas, the Himalayas, Africa and Australia.
Ring of Stones 1982 is an example of his involvement with the landscape, evoking the natural cycles, rhythms, and the silent vastness of wilderness. By installing works in galleries, the artist compresses the sense of isolation, distance, and time which frames the works in situ.
In a gallery space the works provide an analogue of the exterior, past experience while simultaneously asserting a tangible presence. Their installation at ground level – touching the earth by inference – is a deliberately associative gesture. It is that direct contact with the earth which the artist is engaged with in both his walks and his constructions.
