Andy Goldsworthy: against the grain

At the start of ‘Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years’ is a barbed wire fence wrapped around two neo-classical columns that blocks my usual route through the gallery. It’s misleading really, I’ve just climbed the stairs of the National Galleries of Scotland to reach the first floor that’s currently cloaked with a sheep-wool runner mottled with mud and farmers’ multicoloured code. A fluffy invitation to new site-specific installations. Naively, I went into this exhibition imagining an escape from the superficial pace of the city, like my dad and I do on our annual nature hikes – as if modern life and the earth can be severed so easily.

The environmental sculptor has spent his 50-year career resisting physical and bureaucratic barriers to making art. His rebellious streak has its roots in the Land Art movements of the 1960s and ’70s, when artists sought an alternative to the commodification of art in galleries. Seemingly, the natural landscape promises a canvas freed from institutional constraint. However, the privatisation of land and regulatory control mean that artists such as Goldsworthy frequently need to justify their intentions. Often, he is faced with the accusation that his work transgresses the outdoor ethos of ‘Leave No Trace’. But we seem to have forgotten that as humans, we are bound up with nature – also subject to the natural cycles of death and decay.

Given his stature now, you might be surprised to know that the mainstream art world didn’t initially open its arms to Goldsworthy. Born in Cheshire in 1956, his first sculptural experience was as a teenage farmhand, and his first work was a pile of stones on the edge of a field. At 17, he applied to an art foundation at Jacob Kramer College (now Leeds Arts University) but was rejected. He pivoted, completing his foundation at Bradford College of Art while living in a caravan on a farm with his brother because their unruliness became too much for the family home. The following year, after art colleges in Leeds, Nottingham and Hull also rejected him, he completed his Fine Art BA at Preston Polytechnic (now the University of Central Lancashire). Stewing on an onslaught of knockbacks, Goldsworthy considered an alternative route to art – one that could exist without institutional recognition, funded exclusively by farm work. But, at 23, the tide changed: he landed his first solo exhibition at the LYC Museum & Art Gallery in Cumbria. To date, Goldsworthy has staged nearly 50 solo exhibitions internationally. Additionally, his permanent commissions include works for the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and Conondale National Park in Queensland. Yet, the skills he first cultivated in the fields remain the bedrock of his practice.

Like barbed wire restricting the right to roam, bureaucracy can be frustrating for any tenacious artist. Goldsworthy aims to make an artwork a day using predominantly natural materials. While the human hand is tangible in his works, he avoids manmade tools or adhesives, instead relying on his own spit, thorns, or other organic means to sculpt. In his mind, a single artwork can be as fleeting and ephemeral as a rain shadow (an idea he’s explored since 1984) or as sturdy and complex as ten sculptural buildings linked by a six-mile walk in the North York Moors (also known as Hanging Stones). Despite his impulse to work intuitively, time is not always on his side. A considerable portion is spent persuading others that his physical presence in the landscape won’t be an imposition. Documented in the exhibition through proposal drawings, Hanging Stones (2015-) was nearly prevented from being realised due to repeated rejections by the National Park Planning Officers, which were eventually overturned. During this bureaucratic process, he was accused of being obsessive, to which he confessed, “of course I am”.

Frustration aside, there is a sense that being told ‘no’ is a powerful motivator for Goldsworthy. In fact, his lifelong run-ins with authority have shaped this retrospective, where his ambition might blow the roof off this Category A listed building. The exhibition took five years to prepare and six weeks to install. For an environmental artist reluctant to bring his practice indoors because it interrupts his connection to nature’s seasonal rhythms, this must’ve been quite the test of patience. The accompanying catalogue reports that during his first preparatory visit to the RSA he was told to leave on three occasions, and that his dream to transform the building’s exterior into a forest was thwarted by planning regulations.

The confrontational barbed wire fence, then, provokes us to find an alternative route through the gallery. I find myself in a nearby room, staring at a somber jigsaw of gravestones, collected from 108 graveyards across Dumfries and Galloway. This ongoing project began in 2024 after Goldsworthy visited the cemetery where his ex-wife, Judith, is buried. On the anniversary of their mother’s death, Goldsworthy’s children walk up a hill as an act of remembrance.

I made a commitment to an annual nature hike with my dad after we almost lost him. We spend springs and summers in the Scottish Highlands and up summits in the Late District, just me and my dad. He hates heights, ignores ‘keep out’ signs and always ends up being chased by a cow. I wouldn’t put it past him to strip off and lie in the river – like Goldsworthy did in 2016, asking his family to photograph him submerged in Northdale Beck, its water stained red with iron and peat – just to embarrass me.

The show highlights some of Goldsworthy’s key natural interventions from a backlog of 50 years. Photography and film preserve his transitory performances with berries, ice and feathers. The images document introspective moments of outdoor exploration. Most are physically intense and psychologically provocative, like the time he submerged himself in rockweed while crabs nibbled at his earlobes, or squelched blackberries with his hands until they resembled blood.

My dad, once a photographer, took a shaky picture of me sitting on a rock that overlooks Loch Long. I’m too close to the edge and, judging by the emerging grin on my face, it must’ve been the end of a mile (or an argument) as I’m seemingly enjoying the threat of the fall, but ready to laugh with him again. Unless nature has other plans, our lives will follow an unspoken order, and I’ll be left responsible for scattering his ashes. I’ll return to this opening in the loch, with him in tow. And perhaps, if or when I scatter his ashes, there will be a perfect circle of golden leaves, bound by Goldsworthy’s spit, floating in the water beneath my feet.