Andy Goldsworthy

Description

In 1994 when Andy Goldsworthy was working on the installation of Herd of Arches at Hat Hill, he began to play with the chalk and flint that he found in the copse. He covered leaves with powdered chalk, and made leaf prints in chalk scraped from around the flints which traced walks along the woodland paths. These were soon washed away by the rain, but it was obvious that he was captivated by the material. Remembering that chalk was used to mark paths for walks at night, and because the sandstone arches were already marking a path through the copse, Goldsworthy was led to the idea of making arches for a particular time of day, in this case for the night.

When he was discussing the Hat Hill project, how to do it and the tools to use, images of the Arctic, where he had made earlier arch forms in snow and ice, kept coming back to him. 'When I was in the Arctic I wrote in my diary something like, I keep on talking about the snow and ice as a landscape because it feels as solid as if it is the earth, but in fact it was water and that made me realise the movement in stone. When I returned from the Arctic I made a stone arch as an echo of the one I made in the North Pole and now I find the white stone, it is very interesting.'

The more Goldsworthy became involved with the chalk arches, the more he became aware of their significance. 'It is like the keystone in the arch that slots into place, it's the same with the ideas. You build up these things and suddenly the thing is complete and this is another arch. The idea is part of a bigger arch, if you like, of which the pieces are spread all over the place.'