LAND ART EXHIBITION

This is the first part of an ongoing brief, in which I am to propose a hypothetical exhibition on 'Land Art'. The artist I've chosen is Andy Goldsworthy, he's a contemporary Land Artist who creates site-specific Land Art, in his home village of Penpont, Scotland. Photography also plays a large part of his work, as the work is site specific and deteriorates over time, the photography allows him to capture his work for displaying purposes.

 I spent a lot of time reading interviews on Goldsworthy and tried to find the underlying concept of his work to rhyme with the way it was exhibited. I noted that photography was important, as was the importance of his work blending with nature, and being at one with it - eventually deteriorating over time. He also is heavily influenced by the idea of the river and the tide, which is the concept that drove my final idea and concept.

The idea I'm proposing for this exhibition is that the gallery is built as a site specific sculpture that acts as a viewing space and a piece of work at the same time. I want to build the gallery at 6m out at sea on foundations off the shore of the village of Southerness. This is an important location, as its the village where the River Nith meets the sea, which is the stream that starts in the village of Penpont, which is where Andy does the majority of his work.

The reason for the gallery being out at sea is I want the tide to dictate the opening time of the gallery, this is done by having access to the gallery across a bridge that is at 6m above sea level, so that when high tide comes in, the bridge and gallery are submerged and then becomes inaccessible. The tidal times for Southerness are quite good as by 10:21am the tide is at its highest and allows till 16:43pm to reach low tide. By my calculations, it means between 10:21 and 12:30pm the gallery will be submerged.

I also want the weather to dictate the experience, so I'd like the gallery to have no roof, meaning that all light would be natural and if it rains, you'd get wet. All the work would be photographic stills and would be behind thick layers of water proofed display cabinets that are in built into the walls. The flooring of the gallery would be made of metal tiling with in built draining, to avoid and pools of water building up after being submerged. 

The draining inside the gallery would also be reflecting Andy Goldsworthy's trademark river line work. I've created a 3D model of how I imagine the gallery to look if it were built using Google sketch up. You can also see I've textured it with stone, I like to think that the gallery would be built using stone from the local area, so it has a relevance to Andy's work.

The shape of the building is slanted at the front to act as a wave break for the sea. I've also included a viewing platform at the end of the gallery. I included this as I thought it be a nice reminder of the placement of the gallery, taking full advantage of its 'pier' like quality.