Andy Goldsworthy

Today's AEP SOVA lesson was about Andy Goldsworthy. I think, if I remember correctly, this is the first time the SOVA lesson is so video-based, and no information was given to us prior about the artist or his artworks. Mrs Tan asked us to think about his personality, the challenges he faced, the setting he chose, the feelings/thoughts we get from his works, etc.

I was actually.. awestruck. There's a saying that goes, 'the world is your oyster', or something like that. And for Andy Goldsworthy, the world is literally his 'oyster' and his canvas. I was jotting down a lot of his words while watching the video. He says some really abstract things. For example, he feels 'uprooted' when he is travelling, and he doesn't like travelling. He also said that, he is amazed at times where he is actually alive. He also finds 'beautiful balance' when he takes his artworks to their edge of their collapse. It's very, very different.

The first things shown were the bird's eye view of a lot of meanders. Then there were some of his artworks. I didn't know what to expect, until I saw a lots of leaves.. He arranged the leaves in a straight row, and I don't know how he did it. There were curving lines representing meanders ON the leaves. After awhile, they were blown away by winds. Then there was this thing in the river, I didn't know what it was either. It's like a long white strip of something, floating on a river, and it was also curved to look like meanders. It was flowing down the river, and probably would be lost sooner or later.

From these, I gather that Andy Goldsworthy is fascinated by the relationship between time and tide. Growth. Time. Change. The idea of flow in nature. When the leaves flew away, it suddenly dawned on me that, (although maybe he didn't intend to express that) tide is erased by time. Tide - representing the present and the past - can be erased by time.

Then there was another artwork where he used broken pieces of icicles and stuck them onto this branch thing. He stuck them on 2 different sides of the branch thing in such a way that, it's like meanders flowing through the branch? It's hard to describe his artwork, and they really gave me a very abstract feeling. After that, when he completed it, the sun was setting. Unexpectedly, the setting sun's light illuminated the entire icicle structure and the whole thing was beaming. If I were him at that time, I probably would feel very, very, very satisfied, as though nature was rewarding me. Also, coincidentally, icicles are made of water. Water represents tides. When he tried to stick those pieces of icicles together through melting and re-freezing, some of them fell. It sent me a message that lost time cannot be replaced. Like, broken things are just that, broken. What's done is done, and cannot be undone. But that's just my personal realization.

Another thing I remembered was the stacks of rocks he did in varying places. It reminds me of Monet's Haystacks series, doing the same thing in different places. Maybe not at different timings, but Andy Goldsworthy left his stacks of rocks over a long period of time and observed how the environment changes around those stacks. One of those stacks were made up of red rocks and was placed in a green field, another was made up of beach rocks and placed on a beach. The video showed how, over time, the grass grows, the tides rise, and eventually the rocks are buried by grass/water. Immediately, I thought of the idea of time & tide again, such works seem to emphasize the passing of time.

I think he faces many challenges when he's doing his art. The unpredictable forces of nature may or may not help him in his endeavours. The leaves may fly, the icicles will melt, the rocks could crumble, anything could happen. But, I think he likes it that way when it is unpredictable and ever-changing. His tools for creation come from nature, his inspiration comes from nature and he just improvise. He's like, as fluid as nature when creating his works. It's all spontaneous, he barely does any prep work. But also, his works tend to be short-lived and temporal, and have to be documented with photography. That's another thing he has to deal with given the way he chose to do his art. I think it's really serene, out of the box and gives a whole new idea of what art could be like. It's completely refreshing, it's art but it's neither a sculpture nor a painting.