For the internationally renowned land artist Andy Goldsworthy, photography acts as a means to document and immortalise his often ephemeral, site-specific installations before they dissipate back into nature. Using organic materials found in nature, such as earth, snow, sticks, sheep’s wool and plants, Goldsworthy creates temporal art pieces that live within their natural surroundings. He builds them knowing they will eventually collapse, decompose or be swept away by natural forces, thereby offering a powerful commentary on the cyclical process of creation and decay within nature. His photographs act as the only remaining record of these ephemeral pieces.

This exhibition will focus on Goldsworthy’s work with sheep’s wool. On his daily walks, the artist sometimes gathers loose sheep wool which he incorporates into the landscape around him, ‘drawing’ lines on walls, rocks and riverbanks, using the intensity of the wool’s whiteness to contrast with the landscape against which it figures.

In Bowhouse this summer, examples of Goldsworthy’s video and photographic work will be shown alongside his seminal ‘Sheep Paintings’. These were created by placing buckets of ‘salt lick’ on an unstretched canvas pinned onto the ground in a field of sheep. The unpredictable nature of the sheep’s behaviour, the changing weather and Goldsworthy’s selection of location and placement combine in these large works and highlight the unintentional ‘artistic’ interaction between animal, environment and artist.