[credit]
Roadstains #3: Coke spill from parked car on Potomac Ave. Chicago, Fall 2004 / Installation in process, view #3, Hand cut wood relief: Finnish and Baltic Birch plywood painted with latex paint to match wall color, 2017
Ryan traced spilled drinks in the street as he went walking. He transferred them to wood carvings painted white.
Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking (1967)
This formative piece was made on one of Long’s journeys to St Martin’s from his home in Bristol. Between hitchhiking lifts, he stopped in a field in Wiltshire where he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed this work, and recorded his physical interventions within the landscape.
Although this artwork underplays the artist’s corporeal presence, it anticipates a widespread interest in performative art practice. This piece demonstrates how Long had already found a visual language for his lifelong concerns with impermanence, motion and relativity.
Gallery label, May 2007
“Thus walking—as art—provided a simple way for me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement. These walks are recorded in my work in the most appropriate way for each different idea: a photograph, a map, or a text work. All these forms feed the imagination.” − Richard Long
Regina José Galindo, Quién puede borrar las huellas? (Who can erase the traces?, 2003), performance, Guatemala City, photo: José Osorio
In her most celebrated work, Who Can Erase the Traces? (¿Quién puede borrar las huellas?, 2003), she walked barefoot through the streets of Guatemala City, from the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura to the Corte de Constitucionalidad, carrying a basin filled with human blood into which she periodically dipped her feet. The trail of footprints visualized her reaction to the recent news that Efraín Ríos Montt, a former military dictator responsible for the most destructive period of the country’s internal conflict, had been permitted to run for president despite constitutional prohibitions. In this work, the line between Galindo’s body as object and subject was so subtle that the blood covering her feet appeared to be her own; she embodied the war’s victims, taking their blood as hers and appropriating their suffering.
The Green Line, Jerusalem, Israel, 2004; 17:41 min
In collaboration with Philippe Bellaiche, Rachel Leah Jones, and Julien Devaux.
Alÿs performed this walk by carrying a can of paint with a hole in it as he traced a portion of the “Green Line” that runs through the municipality of Jerusalem. There is a filmed documentary of the walk.
—
“In the summer of 1995 I performed a walk with a leaking can of blue paint in the city of São Paulo. The walk was then read as a poetic gesture of sorts. In June 2004, I re-enacted that same performance with a leaking can of green paint by tracing a line following the portion of the ‘Green Line’ that runs through the municipality of Jerusalem. 58 liters of green paint were used to trace 24 km. Shortly after, a filmed documentation of the walk was presented to a number of people whom I invited to react spontaneously to the action and the circumstances within which it was performed.” (credit)
Taking a Line for a Walk from Susan Stockwell on Vimeo.
“12 minute film, 2002
A film documenting a performance called Taking a Line For a Walk by artist Susan Stockwell. It shows a line being drawn around Stockwell in South London. Susan, with her Line Drawing machine, followed the boundary of old Stockwell and left a continuous line with temporary white paint. It lasted for 2 weeks, was 2.7 miles long and took 3 hours to draw. The idea was to make a work where a little known area of London was defined and mapped physically for all to see. The map was taken into 3 dimensions on a life size scale and turned into a walking drawing, a trace of an idea and a performance.
The performance was part of Stockwell Festival and came out of a project called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk: Mapping Stockwell’ which Susan did with pupils from Stockwell Park School.
Shot by Polly Nash, edited in collaboration with Susan Stockwell and produced by Spectacle Productions.
spectacle.co.uk/catalogue_production.php?id=165
Images from the performance, Taking a Line for a Walk have been published in the book, The Art of Walking: a field guide by David Evans Blackdog, 2013.
blackdogonline.com/all-books/the-art-of-walking.html”
—
‘Taking a Line for Walk’ (2003) was a performance where the artist drew a white line around the area of Stockwell in South London defining and mapping the district. The line was made with white poster paint and a Line Drawing Machine, it was 1.7 miles in length and lasted for 2 weeks. The idea was to physically define a little known area of London while also making a 3-dimensional walking drawing and a trace of an idea. It also references the artist’s name alluding to her identity and boundary setting.
The performance was part of Stockwell Festival and came out of a project called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk: Mapping Stockwell’, which Susan ran with students from Stockwell Park School.
A 12-minute film was made that documents the performance, also called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk’.
‘Line Drawing’ is a 2-minute film that examines the line as it’s being drawn in ‘Taking a Line For a Walk’. The film concentrates on the essence of the line, the variety of marks, speed, character, rhythm and pavement surfaces. It creates a mesmeric, meditative and beautiful reflection of the drawings process and everyday pavements, seldom considered or seen. It’s sometimes difficult to know if the artist is taking the line for a walk or the line is leading the artist; perhaps a metaphor for artistic process and those magical moments when the art work takes on a life of its own.
Film shot by Polly Nash, edited by Polly Nash and Susan Stockwell, produced by Spectacle Productions. (credit)
A simple land-art piece, Long has made a line out of colored rocks in the Himalyan mountains.
Richard Long “A Line in the Himilayas” (1975)
[credit]
“Richard Long has, since the beginning of his career, worked outside the gallery to create works by walking, where he leaves marks and traces on the landscape. His work has encompassed making epic walks lasting many days to remote parts of the world, as well as making use of the materials from the River Avon. His work is made through the relationship he develops with a place and his physical involvement with it. On the course of a walk this can entail rearranging natural elements, or walking in lines or circles so that his presence has been made manifest.
As he has remarked, “These works are of the place, they are a rearrangement of it and in time will be reabsorbed by it. I hope to make work for the land, not against it”. Accordingly, many of his walks are made visible through marks on the world which form basic shapes – lines and circles – rather than through constructions or new artifacts. Although Long has often been associated with the earliest days of ‘land art’, his interventions in landscapes are ordinarily temporary or humble and almost always simple.”
[credit]
This work was made by dipping boots in acetone, and then walking across two blocks of styrofoam. The chemical ate away footprints, leaving a walking pattern.