Full transcript
0:10[Applause]
0:15so sometimes i say um
0:17photographs feed the imagination and
0:20sculptures stones feed the senses and so
0:24this is
0:24unique actually because i'm this is the
0:26first time i'm showing
0:28photographs in front of a real sculpture
0:33uh so this this image is uh
0:36england 1968. uh
0:41it's a very simple idea which was to i
0:44wanted to
0:45superimpose my own man-made
0:50pattern onto pre-existing natural
0:52pattern
0:53[Music]
0:55so that's exactly what i did just by
0:57removing the heads of the diesels
1:03the fact that the data's might have
1:04grown back again after a few weeks was
1:06neither here nor there so i'm not
1:08ephemerality is not really part of the
1:10um
1:11part of the work it's just a
1:14it's just a consequence it's a
1:16by-product but
1:18the main idea is what you see now
1:25i'm going to show you some text works as
1:27well as we go along
1:28um so some years ago well along in
1:321995 i had the idea to walk across
1:35france um but then i noticed that
1:38after aft
1:42i noticed that every day dawned
1:44completely cloudless
1:47so that i thought it was a much better
1:48idea to
1:52make make make the walk about
1:55um that the cloudless
1:58um um
2:03and the cloudlessness and um to end
2:07the walk when i saw the first cloud so
2:10that's an example of um i
2:12um if something better comes along i'm
2:14open to um
2:16chance and i can change my ideas if i
2:19have a better idea
2:21as i go along so we'll walk sometimes
2:24can um
2:26suggest completely different ideas from
2:28the one i started with
2:35so this is a line in the himalayas uh
2:38from 1975
2:40from a 25-day walk in nepal
2:44uh it's um i don't i never have the
2:47intention to make monuments
2:49so uh um so this
2:52this this is on the kumbu glacier which
2:55is just before
2:56just below the ice fall on everest
3:00and uh this line would have gradually
3:04broken up over some weeks as the glacier
3:09moved down
3:11the valley so again it's not
3:15it looks permanent in the photograph but
3:17in fact it's it's not
3:44uh
3:46so this is a an early work in ireland
3:49um
3:49[Music]
3:53on the west of ireland on the um
3:57county cloud and that's the cliffs of
4:01moher in the background
4:08so quite often i make a work well most
4:11of the
4:11sculptures are made there marks of
4:14passage
4:15marks of leaving a mark and then moving
4:19on
4:20it just so happened that um
4:23about 20 years later after making this
4:27circle i happened to um i was in this
4:29area and i thought i'd check it out
4:31and and it was still there
4:34which is quite unusual
4:37anyway i just thought that was a night i
4:39realized i don't
4:41think when i started um
4:44this walk um
4:48i didn't realize that i i would be
4:50keeping pace with the spring
4:51as i went northwards
4:54um anyway that's what that's what
4:57happened
5:09so one of the one of the pleasures of uh
5:12me
5:12walking in wilderness areas is the um is
5:16the camping and
5:16finding a nice camping place and it has
5:20to be out of the wind or
5:21near fresh water
5:28and also i like stones so this was a
5:31this work is really just a sort of a
5:33combination and a celebration of the
5:36things that uh that i enjoy doing
5:39camping and making circles of stones
5:49all the stones that you see in all of
5:51these
5:52sculptures are um they're the stones of
5:56the place
5:56so i'm not i'm not i'm not bringing
5:59anything
6:02to the place that i didn't find there
6:18um
6:21so i think that's one of the longest um
6:24continuous
6:32walks
6:34i'm just working on a new book at the
6:36moment called many rivers to cross
6:44so my work has many themes so you've
6:47seen some pictures of stones but what
6:49water is also very important
6:53drinking rivers
6:56um bouncing stones across rivers
7:13dusty boots line from
7:18some time i've spent on the sahara
7:30so this area this is in the hogar
7:33mountains which are near taman russet
7:37um and i thought
7:40i had a rudimentary map and it showed me
7:43one
7:44place that was a permanent spring in in
7:47the mountains where i could get water
7:49but as as the plane was coming into land
7:51i noticed little pools of water
7:54and by chance it had rained for the
7:56first time in like five years
7:58like one week before i arrived so i was
8:01able to um
8:02make this it gave me a lot more freedom
8:05to uh
8:06walk in this very dry area
8:10and so every day the pools of water got
8:12smaller and smaller
8:14and i think i think on the sixth day um
8:18that was the last pool of water that
8:19dried up and that was the end of the
8:21walk
8:22anyway so this is really just my
8:24accumulated
8:26footprints sometimes on a wilderness
8:30walk i will make
8:31another type of walking which is a
8:32ritualized kind of walking which is
8:35as you can see here it's just walking
8:38continuously up and down
8:39in a straight line and until i've i've
8:42made my own
8:43path going nowhere
8:48i quite like the idea of i like the idea
8:51of going nowhere
8:52as well as going somewhere
9:03so after many many years of making walks
9:06which are just measured in days
9:12i realized that i could also measure
9:16a walk by the tides by the moon
9:50so in a way the um as the tides go
9:52around
9:54the british isles um it's a sort of like
9:56a clock which is not synchronized
9:59so as you can see it's um when it's low
10:01tide on one side of the country it's
10:03high times on the
10:04on the other side
10:11so that's another work a work that i
10:14made on that uh
10:16time in the um in the sahara
10:27you might be noticing that you're seeing
10:29quite a few circles in my
10:31work um and the idea is that
10:35that a circle is a
10:38is a perfect platonic form but um
10:42because i'm because they're each made in
10:44a completely different place
10:45every circle is completely different
10:48like every fingerprint is different
10:50every footprint is different
11:11so something else i've said about my
11:12work is that it's um
11:14it's not really about the circle it's
11:16about the whole place
11:17so the fact that i was able to stand in
11:20the place i took the photographs
11:22photograph and line it up with the um
11:24that beautiful
11:26volcanic rock um
11:29plug is um is all part of the
11:33the way that you can receive that work
11:44so i'm an opportunist so um if i can
11:48if i can take a make a beautiful image
11:51of um with my circle in conjunction with
11:53something on the horizon
11:56will um i'll use that opportunity
12:16this is one of my favorite um text works
12:18uh
12:19it's sort of like an um
12:23it's like a balance between something
12:25quite difficult walking for 24 hours and
12:27then
12:29um and then
12:32and then reversing everything and doing
12:34it
12:35something quite easy
12:42so one idea about the um
12:45a lot of the walks are about measuring
12:49measuring myself against the world or
12:52measuring
12:54um how many um
12:59miles it is between a moon rise to a
13:01sunrise for example
13:04um
13:07so i can use utilize a lot of cosmic
13:09events in my work as well
13:11like solstices and
13:14um total eclipses
13:17all that stuff it's all usable
13:27so in a way that's a kind of a symmetry
13:33as well there's a lot of symmetry in my
13:36work
13:45so i had a couple of them wonderful
13:48weeks in um in india many years ago
13:52so this is the um
13:56this is me working on a in a paddy field
13:59where they'd um
14:01they'd harvested the paddy and then
14:02they'd um say all this was just the uh
14:05the white
14:05was the chaff that was lying around
14:09and we were guests with um a very famous
14:12um tribal artist called
14:15jivia soma mache very distinguished
14:18artist
14:20and we were staying on so it was staying
14:24on his tribal land
14:26in maharashtra
14:40so again i'm just using the chaff that
14:42was just lying around and then one of
14:44the baskets that they um
14:46probably used to pick up the dung from
14:48the cattle for their
14:56fuel
15:00so this is another walk about an idea
15:03and the idea
15:05in this one is is the idea of scale
15:08so i'm i'm walking from the huge great
15:12stones in um in brittany
15:15which are like sort of like stonehenge
15:17or something
15:18yeah they're they're equivalent to
15:20stonehenge and then the um
15:24and then the um
15:28the particle um accelerator in
15:32cern in um
15:35between france and switzerland
15:43big scale to small scale
16:04so this is from a couple uh two weeks in
16:06the kuru
16:08in south africa
16:25so one day on this walk i had a there's
16:28an enormous storm came out of nowhere
16:30and there was a huge
16:32flash flood so this whole area was some
16:36just filled up with water up to my waist
16:41so i i'm not showing it to you but i
16:43also made a w work about that
16:45as well so like i say
16:49everything is kind of usable when you're
16:52out in the world
16:54and you only make art by walking
16:58or you only make up by stones one reason
17:01i use stone i've often said
17:02is that um stones are what the world is
17:05made of which means that
17:06um i i can be i can make my work
17:11anywhere in the world i happen to be
17:17off the cuff by chance
17:41so i quite like this one as well so
17:43that's again that's a sort of like um
17:46a balance between something that starts
17:48off quite
17:49easily walking one mile and one mile
17:52two miles and then but then accumulates
17:56so
17:56walking 89 miles in one day is
18:00quite difficult or more difficult than
18:03the first day
18:17so that's a walk about a very famous um
18:21mathematical um sequence and a p and
18:26pattern
18:41it was a renaissance italian renaissance
18:54mathematician
18:58there's a great walk i did in the andes
19:01and that's in
19:02um argentina
19:06so it's called aconcagua circle because
19:09um
19:10it's lined up with that the peak in the
19:12on the horizon is aconcagua which is the
19:15highest mountain in
19:18um in south america i think
19:36okay
19:55so that's a um a text work i made
20:00during that same walk
20:07so i don't i don't consider my text
20:10works
20:12poetry in any way really although maybe
20:14it's an academic point but
20:16it's just um it's just another way
20:21of of working
20:26so sometimes i can use stones and
20:28sometimes i can use words so
20:34the text works started um in the early
20:37days i would just um i would make a line
20:39in iceland or something i'd just say
20:41a line in iceland and then i began to
20:43realize that the um
20:46so the titles were sort of became quite
20:48important
20:49you know in other words looking at um a
20:51photograph without a title is different
20:53from looking at a
20:54photograph with a title
20:57so then i realized that words could be
21:00usable
21:21so this is um i made a i made a road
21:24trip with um
21:25denise and western china some years ago
21:28and um there are all these stones lying
21:32on the side of
21:34the other side of the road so i just put
21:35the stones in the road
21:40roadstone line
21:43so that guy probably didn't even notice
21:45them
21:48it quite often happens that um
21:51i make my work in sometimes remote
21:53places but um there's like
21:56often there's local people around you
21:58know like in
21:59mexico there could be indians or
22:02anything um anyone
22:03um and i might be taking a picture of
22:07circle of stones and i'll walk right by
22:10and not
22:12not not see the circle um
22:17or i like the idea that local people
22:19might see a work of mine
22:21and maybe not they'll see it
22:24as a circle of stones but not identified
22:26as a work of art
22:31so i'm sort of interested in all the
22:33different ways i can
22:36put our into the world as well as you
22:39know here in this gallery
22:41so there's a circle of stains in front
22:42of you
22:44and then there's um those stones are
22:48still
22:48in china somewhere
22:55but unrecognizable as a work of art as
22:57you see it in the picture
23:02so i love all this kind of freedom to
23:04work in all these different ways
23:11another thing to to say about the the
23:13text works is that um
23:14um
23:17[Music]
23:20i mean sometimes i've made a walk where
23:21i um i i pick up a stone and carry it
23:24forward to the next day and then swap it
23:26for another stone so it's from
23:27from day to day from stone to stone
23:30which
23:31is absolutely a sculpture but um it
23:33would
23:34make no sense to try and record it as a
23:36photograph
23:37so um it's much more it makes more sense
23:41to um
23:43use a text work to tell the story of a
23:48sculpture
24:08so that's just a really nice for me
24:10anyway it's uh
24:14from crow to crow to create a chrome
24:38so words are important quite often
24:47and the naming of places
25:03so this is a circle in antarctica
25:06which is a fantastic trip i made which i
25:10had to go with a um
25:11a guide because it's it's actually quite
25:14dangerous
25:14um you know because there's
25:18hidden crevasses and um
25:24so the first thing i had to do is to
25:26learn how to ski a bit
25:28because uh we we pull it's just me and
25:30um
25:31oscar and uh we we had we we
25:35um were pulling sledges you know like
25:37big um
25:38things we had all our kit on statues
25:42and them but one of the things that we
25:44we had was some
25:45like snow shovels so that if there was
25:47if it was windy we could um
25:49and the snow is so um it's like
25:53polystyrene it's completely dry
25:55so with a shovel you can cut out blocks
25:58very fast and make a a windbreak
26:01in front of the tent
26:04so i just took advantage of having
26:06having
26:08this snow shovel and then cut out these
26:10um
26:12blocks of snow
26:15to make the the circle
26:25so that's the only lifeless place i've
26:28been
26:29to on the planet it really is completely
26:36lifeless
26:50this is amazing going there so the um
26:52the actual
26:53uh you we i i flew from the tip of south
26:56america
26:58and we we landed on a um
27:02glacier actually um so
27:08say the actual landing strip it was
27:10actually moving in like about 20 yards
27:12every year
27:14and you have to land very carefully
27:16because you can't put any
27:18you can't put your brakes on because
27:19it's you're landing on ice
27:22so it's a very very long runway
27:26anyway everything about that trip was
27:27amazing
27:31so as you can probably tell there's many
27:33back you know i've been all over the
27:34world and um
27:36done all these amazing walks and
27:38everything so there's like there's lots
27:39of backstory
27:41in my life so what but what you see in
27:43my work is really the um
27:46is what i've taken out of everything
27:49that happens to me and just
27:50i'm showing you what really interests me
27:52which is um
27:54a circle of stones or a circle of snow
27:56or
27:58some idea about a walk oh
28:02so all that's about choice really so i'm
28:05showing you my
28:08what the things i love
28:11to do and to show you
28:21so van gogh was one of my um sort of
28:23heroes when i was at school
28:33so at the end of the walk it really was
28:35a starry night over their own which is
28:37one of his famous paintings
28:50but unfortunately the um the yellow
28:52house is not there anymore
28:54i think it was even bombed by the
28:58by the british in the war or something
29:10ridiculous
29:24so this is some uh a line of red slate
29:26from
29:27vermont in america uh
29:32so this is on the land of a a big rich
29:36collector so this is one way i make my
29:38money is too um
29:40people do buy my work sometimes is they
29:42got enough land
30:01so one thing to say about these works is
30:03that um
30:05the stones are just placed haphazardly
30:08and um
30:10this is about the third time i've made
30:12this work so every time i make it
30:14the work looks the same but every but
30:16also every time
30:18every stone is in a different place
30:22so as long as i followed the same
30:24procedure it keeps the same density
30:27um the same length and everything um
30:31so my work is not like a traditional
30:33sculpture or even like something like
30:35this circle here
30:36every time the circle is made every
30:38stone can be in a different place
30:40so it's not like an object like this
30:42microphone that's the same
30:44all the time
30:59so this is another work that done this
31:01guy
31:03as of mine some cornish slate
31:07this time from from delabor in cornwall
31:36more red straight
31:41looks like we we're gonna end right on
31:44the button
31:47so this is um from the famous um
31:52vineyard in the south of france which is
31:54sort of like a art
31:56this is like a chateau um
32:00so they're they're river stones
32:29so this this is the last one um
32:32so some years ago i was looking at a map
32:34of um
32:35olympus and i noticed there's one one
32:37part of olympus is called
32:39the plateau of the muses um and i
32:42thought
32:44what an amazing uh
32:47place to be called and what a fantastic
32:50location for me to make a work
32:52so like about three weeks ago i went
32:56to olympus and
33:00made this circle on that plateau
33:10and that's it so we can
33:13that's exactly how
33:35comfortable oh yeah yeah yeah lovely
33:38yeah
33:38i'm gonna drive off into the sunset
33:40after this
33:49probably a bit of a fitness dying
33:50question i'm afraid but
33:53some of you alright you're saying i
33:54think one of the months so you
33:56make your money by going back and adding
33:59a bit
34:00of other art
34:04yeah yeah yes blown away the next
34:07yeah yeah no like i said
34:11some that's just the way of the world
34:13you know some things last and some
34:15things
34:16get blown away it's normal so i'm a
34:20great realist you know i work with the
34:23world in all its
34:24permanence and impermanence
34:28but just on a sort of practical note um
34:32like all the photographs in the show
34:33here are um
34:35i've they are just like unique
34:38uh prints so i i've i've sold them
34:41so that's one way i make my money is to
34:44make um photographs with my
34:48handwritten um titles on for your memory
34:51so you can remember what you've done as
34:53well
34:54one reason to take photographs is to
34:56show you all anyone in the world
34:58you know right down through history what
35:00what i've done um
35:03there'd be no point in me making these
35:04beautiful works all around the world
35:06without
35:07telling anyone so
35:10um so the cam the camera has a very good
35:14a very useful function i mean i'm not a
35:16photographer at all
35:17but um i couldn't it's very necessary um
35:22tool for me yeah yeah
35:26i think historically that's one of the
35:28big contributions you made wasn't
35:29challenging the art world that
35:31you couldn't it couldn't be a commodity
35:32for once you've made it
35:34um yes i mean i i didn't really have any
35:37i wasn't engaged to all that sort of
35:39theoretical um
35:42discussion but i i i definitely felt
35:44that um
35:47in the mid 60s that um uh art was
35:50a bit hybrid you know it was like based
35:53in people working in studios and
35:54everything
35:56and i realized it was a whole world out
35:58there of
36:00that with some had the potential um
36:04you know to be in and then when i after
36:06i
36:07made my first you know the lie made by
36:09walking
36:10i realized that um a journey could also
36:14be a work of art
36:17so um then that that introduced the idea
36:20of time and distance
36:22into a work of art
36:27so so so this is this is like
36:29three-dimensional but then a journey
36:31um time is the fourth dimension
36:38so someone i was at saint martin's one
36:40of my um i did a cycling sculpture where
36:42i um
36:43i loaded various bits of a sculpture on
36:46my bicycle
36:47and then i i cycled for about three days
36:49around
36:50um north of london and left it left one
36:54piece of the sculpture in in all
36:55different places so every every piece of
36:57the work
36:58was out out of sight as the last piece
37:02so that really introduced the whole idea
37:05that you could um
37:07i could bring enormous space into a work
37:09of art
37:10just by just by cycling
37:20a um obviously as you mentioned the time
37:24and the considerations
37:30when it comes to making the act of
37:32making
37:33the artwork do you act and then think
37:37afterwards or do you
37:38think a lot about it and then no no it's
37:42um
37:42well the sculptures along the way are
37:44very they're made very spontaneously
37:47they're just um i happen to fight being
37:49a nice
37:50place that has lots of interesting
37:52stones or it might has a wonderful
37:53horizon
37:54or i'm in a good mood or i've just had a
37:57nice meal
37:58um there's many factors that come into
38:00it but basically it's just like
38:02as this show says it's like being in the
38:04moment and
38:05the sculptures are made spontaneously in
38:07that moment
38:09i might and then i'll take a photograph
38:11and then put my rucksack back on
38:14move on the walk and never go back to
38:16that place again
38:20yeah yeah
38:28i was interested that you said that your
38:31textbook
38:32isn't really poetry yes um
38:37i mean coming up there on the screen now
38:39it does seem
38:40uh sorry on the screen you can't see it
38:42oh yeah yeah yeah and
38:44to me it does feel like poetry well
38:46that's okay and i
38:48you know whatever it feels like to you
38:49it doesn't really matter it's just that
38:51i
38:51i don't can you know it's a bit academic
38:58no it's like i say um they're
39:02equivalents to stones
39:04words but like i said
39:07i explained um it's just
39:11a very practical way in i can tell a
39:13story of a sculpture
39:17or i can i can present an idea like the
39:21megalithic to subatomic
39:23um yeah i um
39:26because i love simplicity as well my
39:29work is very classical in some ways
39:39oh yes um what um inspires you
39:43to pick places like bolivia to
39:46make more repeats
39:49um oh yeah well there's many many
39:52different
39:53all different types of reasons for that
39:54going to all different places
39:56down the whole 50 60 years i've been
39:58working
39:59but um so i've got a i've got a a friend
40:03um hamish fulton who's also a walking
40:06artist and we've
40:07made many walks together so in the old
40:09days we would like meet up at the
40:11national
40:11um geographic society um near the albert
40:15hall
40:15and we get all these maps out and that
40:17so we had a big map of bolivia
40:19and um it was completely empty
40:22part of bolivia and then there was one
40:25railway line going
40:26across this area and the only thing
40:29right writing on that on there on the
40:30map was it just said rocky
40:33and there was one railway station in the
40:35middle of this place
40:36so we thought well you know um so two
40:39months later we
40:40we actually um got off the train you
40:42know
40:43at midnight we were only two people to
40:45get off that train in that
40:46uh on that station and um so when we
40:50woke up in the morning we we discovered
40:52what that word rocky meant
40:55although you know back in england and it
40:58was this beautiful like volcanic
41:00plane so that's just a
41:04stupid example of um anything can expire
41:08and so and i i do many walks to places i
41:11know very well
41:13uh but then i can also um go to places
41:16that i have no idea what i'm going to
41:18find there
41:20like i had no maps of when i went to the
41:22sahara
41:25or just at one very primitive map that
41:27just said that had that one place
41:29for a spring
41:52if i'm happy with the way it looks
41:56just um
42:02it doesn't feature in my dreams but
42:04that's an interesting thing
42:05i have my best dreams when our mama
42:07walks you know in in
42:08in a tent sleeping on stones or
42:12in very uncomfortable conditions um
42:15i it's like being in the cinema all
42:17night
42:19so so maybe it may be all this walking
42:22and um being in this beautiful places it
42:24sort of um
42:25triggers something in the brain that
42:27makes you dream
42:31i went and visited uh richard when he
42:33was making a work at hester
42:35oh yeah last month we all know that
42:38amazing estate
42:39and you showed me where you'd slept it
42:41was just convenient
42:43when i was yeah rather well there's
42:45nowhere for me to stay anyway so i just
42:47took my ten down and then camped camp by
42:50my
42:50line
42:56one of the other conversations we had
42:58was about the work that you made during
43:00the lockdown
43:02yeah those new works could you tell us a
43:05little bit about this
43:06i'm always working so um all you might
43:09say i'm never working it's just um
43:14yes i did so i mean every day i was
43:17plenty of opportunities to
43:18to walk from where i live because i live
43:21in the countryside so
43:23lots of country lanes and fields and
43:28audiences that when they're out on a
43:29walk that they can
43:31employ some of your processes
43:34yes or they make up their make up their
43:37own i don't
43:40the last thing i want to do would i
43:42don't really want people i don't want
43:44followers i don't want
43:45people to copy me you know
43:48i mean they can if they want but i mean
43:50it's not the idea
43:52i don't want followers i don't want
43:54people think he was quite a romantic
43:55artist well i i said
43:58um the idea of romantic
44:02um i i think obviously
44:05um compared to an artist who who works
44:09in a city um most most artists are urban
44:13artists
44:14most artists were considered so compared
44:17to like andy warhol
44:19or um of joseph boyce or lucien freud i
44:23i
44:24you know just to be in the landscape is
44:27is a kind of a romantic idea
44:30but i don't i don't feel um any
44:33connection with the
44:34romantic movement of
44:37wordsworth and
44:48i'm sure i'm sure farm farmers don't
44:50feel romantic
44:51they don't feel you know it's bloody is
44:54yeah it's bloody hard work being a
44:55farmer
44:56you know even though they live in this
44:57beautiful landscape and um
45:04so once i was doing early in the um
45:08in the late sixes i was doing a walk i
45:10was climbing over it i was walking
45:11through a hedge or something and i met
45:13the farmer
45:14and he he seemed to realize that i
45:16wasn't um
45:17a tourist and he said god bloody work
45:19isn't it
45:21so um it kind of was seemed to
45:24appreciate
45:25appreciating that um i wasn't um
45:28i wasn't just an idol tourist
45:39yeah is my um it's my the local
45:42wilderness place to where i live
45:44in bristol so
45:48um
45:52sure yeah well we're in we're in devon
45:54now aren't we yeah
46:00um well i think i mean i
46:03i i knew it from my childhood because my
46:05grandparents lived
46:07in bevvy tracy and um then he moved to
46:10morton hampstead and
46:12um so i always had family holidays near
46:16near the moor um
46:20but it's relatively
46:23it's almost like a sort of undulating
46:24plateau it's fairly flat so it's
46:26actually it lends itself very well to
46:28making
46:28walking in straight lines or walking in
46:30perfect circles
46:31in other words i can do certain works on
46:34dart wood that i couldn't do in the
46:35scottish highlands
46:37which just has has cliffs and
46:40stuff so it's it's a combination of
46:42being very practical for my purposes
46:45and and also very beautiful and um
46:48almost no
46:49no no one around
46:57is there anywhere else in the world that
46:59you haven't traveled
47:01oh many many places it's a ridiculous
47:03idea to think that i've been everywhere
47:05you know
47:05i've barely touched where would you most
47:08want to go to
47:16i like going back to well-known
47:18well-loved
47:19places just as as much as i like going
47:22to new places that that is sort of like
47:24very complimentary but i suppose the one
47:29thing that i i'm attracted to very
47:32empty um stony landscapes you know like
47:35the west of ireland or
47:36bolivia um so i haven't walked
47:40much in jungles so maybe maybe i'd
47:44like to go into um places like borneo or
47:49vietnam about three or four years ago i
47:52did go to the
47:53the amazon for the first time
47:56which is great interesting
48:01it's hard to walk a straight line in the
48:04jungle
48:13[Music]
48:14a rudimentary diary on long walks but
48:17that's really just a sort of um
48:21just to remind me what i have for
48:22breakfast they're not literally diaries
48:25um um
48:29or sometimes like especially on the
48:31dartmoor walks um i
48:33i just write write things in the margin
48:35of the map
48:40um
48:43yeah do you read
48:47no not on a walk no no because books are
48:49too heavy it's ridiculous to take a book
48:52no no i'm very
49:00um
49:13yeah yeah have you been there yes i have
49:17i haven't walked with the apparitionist
49:19but i i've
49:20met some um and um
49:24yeah i've read that book as well you
49:26know the song lines
49:28i think that was his best book
49:36it's not i'm not always
49:39yes i'm most of my walks i do on my own
49:41but that's not to say that i meet
49:43interesting people along the way
49:45so um
49:50so quite often meeting people at various
49:53points along a walk can be um they can
49:55be life saving or they can tell you what
49:57that's a dangerous route and what's
49:59in you know um
50:02so okay so i've got two anecdotes so on
50:06that walk in um
50:07in 75 in in nepal uh we were
50:10me and hamish were in in the little uh
50:13cafe namche bazaar you know just before
50:15everest and then they seem to be like
50:18sort of um tidying the tables up and
50:20then
50:21edmund hillary came in and just sat down
50:22next to me and had a cup of coffee
50:26so um then i don't know if you know the
50:29uh the famous
50:30lines in nazca in in peru
50:33um so in 1972
50:37we met maria reich who he was the woman
50:40who um
50:42mapped and measured all those incredible
50:45like lines in the desert so that was
50:48another memorable
50:51experience and you know a very
50:53interesting person to meet
50:55on our walk
50:59so we actually slept we all like the
51:01three of us slept
51:03in in one of the lines you know head to
51:05toe head to toe head to toe
51:08it's interesting that the the names of
51:10the people that you've met don't feature
51:12in your work or that i've seen no no
51:15because
51:16it's a good point that people are really
51:18not the subject of my work
51:21if i was a writer i'd be telling you
51:24lovely stories about all these like
51:25anecdotal happenings but um
51:29so like i said in the talk what you see
51:31in my work is what i
51:33what interests me to show you and what
51:35i've done
51:39what our audiences have really liked
51:41though is in the work
51:43the dartmouth work that we have upstairs
51:45from 72 where you talk about the song
51:47in your head so you give yeah yeah
51:51well is that is that a dartmouth word oh
51:54i don't know which one it oh yeah yeah
51:56yeah
51:57talk about karina karina oh yeah yeah
51:59sure yeah yeah the bob dylan
52:01one yeah yeah so music is really
52:04very important in my like like many
52:06people you know
52:07you know it's the same track of my life
52:09like um
52:10um so i love music and um
52:14so i did a walk in ireland once um which
52:16um
52:18i was thinking about one piece of music
52:20every day
52:22so yeah so it could have been like a
52:25johnny cash or a jimmy rogers or um
52:30bob dylan or something
52:34um it was called walking music
52:40i really like this it just feels it
52:43really does make you imagine you
52:45yeah well i'm very i think music is very
52:48emotional it's probably the most
52:50emotional
52:51feel-good art form but i feel very close
52:54to music in that sense you know
52:55i like i feel that my work is um
52:59how's that sort of feel good um
53:01emotional
53:03like like like rock and roll it's just
53:07that's what it is really just another
53:09form of rock and roll
53:11just without the role just the rocks
53:18i i i think one thing that um the
53:20spinner
53:22a sort of uh like a a good idea in my
53:26work is that um i like the idea of
53:27making something from nothing
53:30it's not completely nothing but it's um
53:32it comes very close to being you know
53:34it's a sort of zen
53:35idea of um
53:38everything paired down to essentials
53:42well my friend carl andre he said uh you
53:44know fellow
53:45the guy who made the bricks and
53:47everything um he's a very good friend he
53:49was already one of the first supporters
53:50of my work
53:51in the 70s 60s
53:54and so carl said art is what we do and
53:57culture is what has done to us
54:03so i think all artists they start out
54:06you i i just wanted to be an artist to
54:08make art
54:09you know ending up here giving a talk
54:13being in the tate gallery that's not
54:15it's not part of my plan
54:17it's just something that happens so
54:20after a while after many years
54:23i realize i am like it or not i'm part
54:26of art history
54:28and i have all my own history on my back
54:32as well so
54:36um i in some ways i have to pay a lot
54:39more attention now
54:40to what i do and how i put my work in
54:42the world because um
54:45um
54:48because i have to be more responsible
54:50when i was a young artist
54:52um i i i did things without
54:55thinking you know it was intuitive and
54:59um yeah it did yeah
55:03i've been lucky yeah hope you like my
55:05little house
55:07yeah um this is the film we'll turn up
55:09the volume um
55:10three films uh from the tape on which is
55:13practice that go all the way back to the
55:14sixties actually
55:15so we'll keep that rolling so you can
55:16have a look and have a look around the
55:18cabin
55:19and they do keep in touch with us we're
55:20the exhibition's until the 31st of
55:22october
55:22and we're running pause for the amazing
55:25sarah and rachel
55:26thursday fridays and saturdays so do
55:28goof on and come and see us again
55:31thank you
55:35hats on
56:09you