Richard Long, Lisson Gallery

With the Lisson Gallery's Richard Long exhibition, London welcomes back a founding father of Land Art.

Don't miss Richard Long's hotly anticipated solo show at the Lisson Gallery this month, the first time he has shown at the gallery for over thirty years. Long is considered one of the most important proponents of Land Art, which calls engages with nature as both a subject and a medium.

Long transformed the way we think about the landscape with his 1967 work, A Line Made by Walking. Whereas traditional landscape painting depicts a scene from a fixed point of view, Long's photograph of his own footprints trailing behind him in the grass, proposed that his own movement is important as a work of art, rather than a static picture. The traces left by Long's body as he walks – and the arrangements that he makes with the materials that he finds, such as stones, chalk, and clay – constitute a dialogue with nature. The notion of dialogue also recurs in Long's work with text, which combines associative strings of words that become ciphers for the journey. 

Walking has remained at the heart of Long's practice as he continues to explore the remote landscapes of the world. Highlights of this latest show will come from his 2012 journey across Antarctica.  We will also see new works made in the gallery, such as a sculpture of standing slate stones gathered from hiking in Cornwall. Drawing more from the British Isles, a set of gestural mud works accompany; created with the spreading of Long's hands they use white Cornish clay and tidal river mud gathered in Bristol.  Seminal is an overused word, but arguably it is one that applies to Long as an artist. He is a contemporary legend who still continues to engage us with his unique practice.  This show is not to be missed.