Andy Goldsworthy Biography

Cheshire, England, 1956 -

Since the late 70s, established British artist Andy Goldsworthy has been making site-specific work in nature, using nature itself as a 'found object', as the raw material for his sculpture. A photographic document is then made of the work, with its location and the date of its completion, similar in this respect to the work of Richard Long and Hamish Fulton. Although Goldsworthy in his more recent, more monumental work, has used assistants and plant machinery, the majority of his work is produced by the artist's own hands at the designated location.

He has stated that his work could easily be realized within the environs of his home in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, although he has traveled extensively in Britain, Europe, America, Japan and Australia. However, a sense of place does in fact play a large role in the making of Goldsworthy's sculpture, such that each site is transformed, however provisionally, with each intervention. To this extent his work is at once both fleeting and permanent in that it alters the organization of the natural landscape.

Goldsworthy is interested in the 'movement, light, growth and decay' of nature. He exploits its vital impermanence: changes in season, weather and terrain. The materials of Goldsworthy's work are in turn affected by change; he employs such transitory elements as leaves, wood, rock, ice, snow, peat and sand. By necessity, then, the majority of the sculptures must be completed and documented in one day as light and temperature would affect their very materiality, their existence. One example of this would be Goldsworthy's ephemeral performance sculptures, when sand, water or earth is tossed into the air, where the resultant photograph becomes the sole record of the work's brief apparition.

The artist has described color as a kind of energy. The vibrant colors found in nature are unstable. Like all organic matter they are consumed by time and erosion. Goldsworthy makes use of nature's seasonal or meteorological changes based on his geographical location. And as climate affects his color palette, so does it affect his work's form. For the past two decades, Goldsworthy has created works out of a given landscape by inscribing it with circles, lines and spirals: all based upon elemental forms that we see in nature and that all organic matter is made up of at a molecular level. Goldsworthy has gauged long cracks in the earth bordered by a line of imbricated stones. He has also built up from the earth creating towering arches and cones set in water or on land with modified rocks or cut rectangles of ice. And as Goldsworthy's sculptures are based on elemental forms, they also employ seriality or patterning in their construction. The effect of seriality, of something that extends over time, underlines the temporal, and temporary dimension of his work.


The Barbican Art Centre, London, 2000

Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, London, 1999

Den Haag Sculptur 1999, The Hague, 1999

Plymouth Art Centre, Plymouth, 1999

Galerie Lelong, Paris, 1998

National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1998

Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, London, 1996

Anchorage Museum of Art, Alaska, 1996


Andy Goldsworthy: Arch, Thames and Hudson, London, 1999

Andy Goldsworthy: Wood, Viking, London, 1996

Sheepfolds, Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, London, 1996

Black Stones Red Pools, Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, London, 1995

Andy Goldsworthy: Stone, Viking, London, 1994

Andy Goldsworthy: Ice and Snow Drawings, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1992