Uncommon Ground: Themes and Contexts

Uncommon Ground - Land Art in Britain 1966 -1979, Mead Gallery, University of Warwick, February 2014.

Themes and Contexts

1. Prehistory

Well, England is covered with huge mounds and converted hills and probably you know Stonehenge, although that is one of the least impressive of all the things. In fact most of England had had its shape changed - practically the whole place, because it has been ploughed over for centuries - rounded off.

Richard Long at 'Earth'  symposium,  Cornell Univerity, Ithaca, NY, 1969.

When Long made these comments in 1969 he echoed a widely held sense of fascination with the ancient and prehistoric past on the British Isles.

Some of the distinctive aspects of the 1970's experience of prehistory are lost to contemporary viewers. The intimacy of  getting to know an ancient site by walking on it - as Long had done while making his work Silbury Hill (1970-71) - is now prohibited. (p. 60)

2. Environment

A useful distinction is made between Environmental Art and Land Art.

It is important here to clarify the difference between Land art and environmental art,  because not all works of Land art are works of environmental art and not all environmental art deals explicitly with landscape.

For example, one might be able to read a concern with environmental change into the transient effects of tide and weather captured in Garry Fabian Millers (p.54) Sections of England: Sea Horizons , 1976 -77, but these were not explicitly the subject of the work. .

3. Historical and Cultural Context pp. 70 - 76

Back to the land: The emergence of land art coincided with a growing interest in self sufficiency; Writers such as John Seymour popularised 'growing your own' and the period saw the emergence of organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. There was a growing interest in traditional folk art and music and following the moon landings in 1969, the idea of a Gaia Hypothesis - formulated by James Lovelock - gained popularity

Wilderness and open air locations were a key ' canvas' for many British  Land artists, it is useful to note that campaigns in the 1930's had opened up many remote and upland areas, and access to these was facilitated by a significant increase in car ownership and road improvements which happened in the twenty years following the Second World War. Ironically, perhaps, it was the increase in car ownership which enabled walking and hiking to emerge as popular past-times.

There is an interesting discussion of Land art's relationship with romanticism (p.73) The point is made that it is not surprising that young artists were keen to assert their independence from the traditions of English landscape and rural traditions. Indeed the appearance of much of the work places it visually within the interest in minimalism and conceptual art emerging in the 1960's. - there is a sense in the spirit of radicalism  in Art schools such as St Martin's and Hornsey that it was essential to establish a break with tradition and an international outlook.

With the passage of time it now is possible ' to consider the turn to landscape of the 1960s  and 1970s as a way of resisting, or at least eluding the demands of linguistic Conceptualism and  the high-minded austerity of the Avante Garde. In this sense, to make a work of art by the act of walking, for example, can be understood as the assertion of a vital freedom. To engage directly with natural materials, whether earth, stones, driftwood, great, water or sunlight, or to make site-specific 'sculptures' in open spaces, is to open up space in which meanings are unpredictable, and in which the histories and associations of place inevitably become part of the work. (p. 73 - 74)