After our month off we are back to explore one of the standout exhibitions of the Edinburgh Art Festival, Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years. Featuring over 200 works, the show includes stunning installations made in response to the iconic Royal Scottish Academy building, as well as drawings, photographs, films, sketchbooks and archival items dating back to the mid-1970s. To provide insight into the work we will be joined by Chief Curator Patrick Elliott.
Goldsworthy is internationally recognised for his work with natural materials such as clay, stones, reeds, branches, leaves, snow and ice. For over 50 years, he has created a unique and highly influential body of work that speaks of our relationship with the land.
Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years has been conceived by the artist as a single immersive artwork in response to the space, materials and character of the RSA building. The interrelationship of humans and the working land is a recurrent theme in Goldsworthy’s art and in the exhibition. He often presents the land as a hard, hostile and brutal place. Fences and barriers feature prominently, in the form of rusted barbed wire stretched across a room, and a massive, cracked clay wall. As in nature, beauty and danger co-exist.
