Richard Long

I saw Richard Long’s exhibition Heaven and Earth at Tate Britain. Many of the early works were photographs of interventions he had made in the landscape on walks early in his career and the mounting and labelling were quite old fashioned and quaint. I particularly enjoyed the site-specific mud paintings he had made in the gallery, I liked their freedom and the way the paint splattered off the edges. They are large and run the length of the room and their unpredictability is part of their charm. It seems a shame that they are dismantled and disappear at the end of the exhibition but ephemerality is a feature of Richard Long’s work and most of his pieces only exist in photographs. One room was devoted to his geometric-shaped sculptures made from similar stones. These had a majestic monumentality and the viewers were walking round them quietly as if in a church. I thought the outlines of the shapes on the floor should have been removed once the stones were in place as seeing the outlines made them seem too contrived and spoiled their natural effect.