IGNIS Summer 2016 | Page 14

Ever laid on your back and just watched the clouds scurry past? Imagined yourself in the clouds, or projected imaginary forms onto them (that one really looks like a dragon!), watched the shift in colours and marvelled at views that are there any time for the taking if only we remember to look up? This calming pastime has been given an upgrade by artist James Turrell. jamesturrell.com He creates Skyspaces all over the world - specific buildings designed to capture the view of the sky without the distraction of the world around, using architecture and light technology to enhance the experience. JAMES TURRELL – SPACE THAT SEES by Yoav Bezaleli Embed video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6XQBf-pd1E However, can you ever reach a point where Land Art doesn’t feel like art? In 1967 Richard Long walked up and down a field trampling down grass into one straight line. The photograph of “A Line Made by Walking” now hangs in the Tate Gallery. www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ long-a-line-made-bywalking-p07149 The following year Richard Long went much further, creating “A Ten Mile Walk England” a piece of art which consists of walking 10 miles in an exact line on a compass bearing of 290 degrees, not deviating for the contours, across 14 IGNIS copyright Richard Long part of Exmoor – what most people would class as a ramble rather than art. The evidence for this piece of art was a line drawn across an ordnance survey map. www.tate.org.uk/research/ publications/tate-papers/17/tenmiles-on-exmoor The debate about how to interpret work like this has raged ever since. Is the map the art or the walk? It is part of the whole debate of what defines art itself. This summer, take a leaf out of the land artists’ canvas; enjoy nature, create with nature, connect with nature. Get out and about and discover nature wherever you are.