Born in Cheshire in 1956, Andy Goldsworthy worked on farms in Yorkshire as a teenager, where he learned the skills which have become part of his process. Harrowing the fields, picking out and piling stones, cutting, digging and stacking. After studying art, he began photographing and filming these ephemeral creations.
He has always risen to the challenge of working outdoors, adapting to the elements and adjusting to the material he finds. Staging such a major show inside has brought new challenges.
Bureaucratic issues to overcome and a large-scale building which he’s determined to work with, not against.
A runner made from sheep fleeces, daubed with colours marking different farms, carpets the stairs leading up to the galleries. A sculpture made of discarded work gloves, worn and dusty, is glimpsed in a corner, leading to a slowly cracking clay wall, and a 20-metre-long Oak Passage made from discarded trees.
“The oak branches stand on an oak floor and that’s not by chance,” he says.
“It reveals that this was once a tree, I hope, in the minds of people who walk it.”
