h 52.5 cm
Purchased with the aid of a Government Grant (V&A Fund), 1980
In 1997 the Henry Moore Institute organised an exhibition, `More and
Less' The Early Work of Richard Long, selected by Alison Sleeman. As
part of this exhibition, we showed Land Art, a film produced by the
Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum in 1969. This film included a number of
artists exploring the relationship between their work and nature. One
of these artists was Barry Flanagan. Flanagan engages with the sea,
placing an empty column in the sand around which the sea flows as the
tide comes in. The camera looks down the hole that the column has
made, and thus it appears that there is a hole in the sea. It is as
though Flanagan is both attempting to pin down, or play with, nature,
yet also recognising the importance of working with nature to achieve
this experimental work. In 1975, Flanagan produced Clay Figure, and
whilst it is possible to talk about the work in terms of Celtic
symbolism and the artist's interest in working with organic materials,
such as sand, hessian and rope, I can't help feeling that he's playing
with something here: nature; history; pre-history. He has put a stone
head on top of this incised lump of clay. Perhaps he's playing with
us.
