Sunday 11 March 2012

Andy Goldsworthy in the Museum Basement

Here we are back down in the basement of the Museum of Scotland in Chamber Street, where Dumfriesshire base Sculptor, Andy Goldsworthy, who has featured several time in my blogs, has a number of pieces in amongst the old stuff. Most of Andy's work is made using natural materials or by using traditional building techniques and so they fit in rather nicely with the artifacts from those bygone days before industrialisation.

This piece, Stacked Whalebones, was made in 2001. It is the complete skeleton of a 5m pilot whale which was found beached in Northumberland in 1997.


This piece is called Hearth and dates from 1998. It is made from wood collected at the construction site of the museum building itself.




I should than my sister Edie here for the Andy Goldsworthy book she bought me for Christmas or else I would have unable to definitely identify this as a Goldsworthy - no sign of a label in the museum for it. It is made made of clay which has been carefully controlled in the drying period to produce this pattern.

The two dugout canoes here were found in Dumfriesshire Lochs - one dates from 200BC to 200AD and the other much later, around 1100 AD


In this one Andy has produced a circle in the clay. 

My thanks to Francois Jordaan for allowing me to use this picture from his Flickr pages here


You can see the circle from the clay wall reflected in found substantial walls in the middle of the Gallery. Called Enclosure, they are build from reworked roofing slates from around the Edinburgh area.



11 comments:

Shundo said...

I'm a big fan of his stuff - we have a couple of large tree sculptures here in San Francisco - so it's nice to see more, even if it seems odd for them to be in a museum in some ways.

John @ Beans and I on the Loose said...

I like his work. Thanks for showing it.

Sandy's witterings said...

Shundo, Andy Goldsworthy's stuff does have an outside air to it, though I think his clay wall would suffer somewhat as might the wooden structure. The museum has some pieces of his on the roof and there are some outside in the Botanics in Edinburgh too

Thank you John - he's getting quite an international figure now so you might see more of his stuff on your side of the pond soon.

Anyone know if there's more over there outside San Francisco?

Ellie said...

Some unusual pieces here but I have to say I quite like them.
I didn't realise just how many bones a whale would have but that is some pile there.
Thanks for introducing me to Andy Goldsworthy I had not heard of him before.

Marsha Young said...

Beautiful for photos of interesting pieces.

I, too, love a good cup of tea, from time to time (as in daily, sometimes hourly).

Have a good day and thanks for stopping by. ...Marsha

Sandy's witterings said...

Worth keeping your eyes open for Ellie - you might recognise these Christmas stamps for 2003 - he was responsible for those
http://www.norphil.co.uk/2003/ice.htm

Only hourly Marsha! (maybe you've got a big cup). Seriously, thanks for your comment and welcome.

Shundo said...

Sandy, I think in the film about him there were a few more non-ephemeral works in the States - I'm thinking of the wall that ran through the woods and into a stream, but I can't think where that is now; some university or other...

The Glebe Blog said...

Very Interesting Sandy.
Looking at the dug out canoes, and comparing them to those of a similar age found in the South Pacific, it's a wonder we and not Samoans etc. built an empire. (I visited Te Papa, Wellington in 2003)

Zia Wolf-Sun said...

Very cool photos :) I especially like "The Hearth". could live very happily with that!

Ellie said...

Thanks for the link to the stamps - they are amazing. Very talented man.

Sandy's witterings said...

Shundo - a quick surf comes up with these two in American universities - neither sound like the one you're thinking off
http://museum.stanford.edu/news_room/archived_acquisitions_goldsworthy.html
http://webs.wichita.edu/dt/tour/show/?VIEW=182&CURPAGE=1077

Jim - If I lived with Samoan weather, I'd be uninclined to go off and conquer the world, no matter how good my canoe was.

Thanks Zia - You'd need a fair sized residence before you could start housing Goldsworthys I think, even the smaller ones.

Ellie - he certainly is - I'm sure he will be appearing again on these pages from time to time.