Press release
EXPEDITION LAND ART
Land art in the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970, 4,6 m x 460 m, Great Salt Lake, Utah, USA. Photo: S. Smallenburg
Expedition land art
An exhibition entitled Expedition land art is being held from 19 September 2015 to 3 January 2016
(inclusive) at Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort. The exhibition marks the publication of a Dutch-language book
of the same name: Expeditie land art by Sandra Smallenburg. Although museum collections in the
Netherlands contain many works by leading international land artists, this is the first ever major exhibition on
the land art movement to be held anywhere in the Netherlands. The main emphasis in the show will be on
six pioneering land artists (Nancy Holt, Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, James Turrell, Richard Long and
Marinus Boezem) and their influence on a younger generation (Francis Alÿs, Tacita Dean, Mario Garcia
Torres, Zeger Reyers, Pierre Bismuth and Lara Almarcegui).
Pioneering land artists
In the late sixties, a number of artists on both sides of the Atlantic decided to leave the safe white walls of
art galleries and museums and set off into the wilderness. In the United States, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt,
Robert Smithson and Walter De Maria drove out deep into the desert to make their mark on sand flats and
salt lakes. In Europe, Richard Long and Marinus Boezem started to work with materials found in the
landscape: materials like rocks, stones, trees and branches.
Those land art pioneers had an influence that is only now, almost half a century later, really clear. The idea
that artworks can be created on site, in places far beyond the walls of the established institutions, has taken
permanent root in the contemporary art field. So has the idea that a journey can be a work of art, presenting
inspiration at every turn. Land art has turned art into an adventure. The air of freedom and bravura that
surrounds the artworks of the sixties and seventies still permeates and inspires the art of today.
Land art in Kunsthal KAdE
This exhibition shows how much today’s artists owe to the pioneering land artists of the past. Francis Alÿs
and Guido van der Werve have followed them out into deserts and polar regions. Tacita Dean and Mario
Garcia Torres have made pilgrimages to places where Robert Smithson worked. Zeger Reyers and Lara
Almarcegui work with materials found in nature. And their constant lust for adventure keeps the spirit of the
pioneers alive.
The forthcoming exhibition includes work by:
Lara Almercegui (ES, 1972) | Francis Alÿs (BE, 1959) | Marinus Boezem (NL, 1934) | Pierre Bismuth (FR,
1963) | Tacita Dean (UK, 1965) | Walter De Maria (US, 1935 - 2013) | Mario Garcia Torres (MX, 1975) |
Nancy Holt (US, 1938 - 2014) | Jan Robert Leegte (NL, 1973) | Richard Long (UK, 1945) | Zeger Reyers
(NL, 1966) | Robert Smithson (US, 1938 - 1973) | Theo Tegelaers (NL, 1963) | James Turrell (US, 1943) |
Guido van der Werve (NL, 1977)
Key exhibits in the main gallery will be Richard Long’s 1977 installation Wood Circle – a wooden circle 700
cm in diameter, which is now in the collection of the Van Abbemuseum – and a reconstruction of Marinus
Boezem’s 1968 installation Rietveld bewogen door ventilatoren (‘Reed bed moved by fans’). Richard Long is
a British artist who creates his works in the course of long walks. He uses stones to construct sculptures,
digs lines in the desert sand, or constructs circles of twigs or branches on the ground – images which he
then records by photographing them. Ever since the late seventies, Long has also made a habit of bringing
his found natural materials back inside the walls of the museum. He uses fragments of slate or bits of wood
to make perfect circles or rectangles on the gallery floor, arranging them like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Marinus Boezem comes from the Netherlands. Rietveld bewogen door ventilatoren is a conceptual work
designed to make viewers aware of the structure of a reed bed by using electric fans to blow waves in it. In
addition to these two full-size installations, the display will include a number of sketches, photographs and
prints by the two artists. Richard Long’s 1986 installation White Marble Line will also be on show.
Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty
Robert Smithson’s film documenting the construction of Spiral Jetty will be shown in one of Kunsthal KAdE’s
smaller exhibition spaces. Smithson’s great earthwork sculpture was built in 1970 on the eastern shore of
Utah’s Great Salt Lake. It is 450 metres long and contains 7000 tons of basalt. When it was built, parts of
the lake were blood-red with algal blooms and Smithson (a keen fan of J.G. Ballard’s science fiction) said
that the landscape there make him think of Mars. Shortly after the sculpture was completed, the level of the
lake rose and the jetty disappeared under water. For three decades, it could be seen only in photographs. In
2002, however, a persistent drought led to the re-emergence of Spiral Jetty, now encrusted with white salt.
Ever since then, it has once again been possible to visit the work. To get there involves a thirty-kilometre
drive over bumpy tracks traversing a landscape of unearthly beauty.
Tacita Dean, JG, 2013. Film still. Courtesy: the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery,
New York/ Paris
Pilgrimage to Spiral Jetty
In 1997, British artist Tacita Dean made a pilgrimage to the Spiral Jetty, but came to grief on the shores of
the Great Salt Lake. Smithson’s jetty was still submerged at the time and there were no signposts to help
her identify the site. So Dean’s quest was in vain, although it did produce her sound piece Trying to Find the
Spiral Jetty (included in this exhibition). Years later, in 2013, Dean journeyed to the area again. Following in
the footsteps of Smithson and Holt, she made a road trip across Utah, Nevada and California. The
otherworldly landscapes she filmed on the way were as deserted as they had been in Smithson’s time,
almost half a century earlier. In her film JG (also on show in the exhibition), the weird crystalline formations
of Mono Lake, bizarre reflections of the Great Salt Lake and shimmering salt flats of the Great Basin form a
timeless backdrop against which armadillos slowly pick their way and water drops glide over the salt crusts.
The exhibition will also feature Dean’s massive photogravure Quatemary (234 x 683 cm, 2014).
James Turrell, 'Roden Crater', San Francisco Volcanic Field, 1979 ... Courtesy: the artist
Green Cathedral and Celestial Vault
Just outside Almere there is a magnificent gothic cathedral that has literally grown up out of the flat polder
land in the last thirty years. Marinus Boezem outlined the ground plan for the church in 1987 by planting 178
Lombardy poplars to mark its walls and columns. Since then, the trees have grown into sturdy thirty-metre
columns and today the Green Cathedral really feels like a triple-aisled church, with concrete paths reflecting
the ribs of the imaginary cross-vaulting. Boezem based his (150 x 75 m) ground plan on that of Reims
cathedral, the supreme example of gothic church architecture. In a forested area alongside the Green
Cathedral, the artist has also created a clearing of precisely the same size and shape: a ‘negative’ of the
cathedral. Seen from the air, it looks exactly as if the hand of God has lifted up a group of trees in the shape
of a cathedral and set them down a couple of hundred metres away.
Meanwhile, in the Arizona desert, American artist James Turrell has been working for over forty years to
create his masterpiece Roden Crater. He intends this huge volcanic crater to become a place where people
can come to obtain a supreme view of the sky and stars. In 1996, Turrell gave us a foretaste of Roden
Crater when he created Celestial Vault: a somewhat smaller, entirely man-made crater in the dunes by
Kijkduin. The visitor is invited to lie back on a stone bench and gaze at the sky. With a little concentration,
he or she can experience a small miracle: the horizon appears to bend and the sky to arch upwards, giving
the viewer the sensation of being imprisoned under a vast bell-jar. Turrell’s work is represented in this
exhibition by models, photographs and sketches.
Nancy Holt 'Sun Tunnels', Great Basin Desert, Lucin, Utah. Photo: S. Smallenburg
Sun Tunnels
The exhibition will also include several videos by Nancy Holt (Robert Smithson’s widow) – Swamp (1969),
Sun Tunnels (1978) and The Making of Amarillo Ramp (1973-2013) – and her film Mono Lake (1973-2013).
In 1974 Holt purchased sixteen hectares of desert land west of the Great Salt Lake, on the Nevada- Utah
border. There, hours away from habitation, she had four concrete sewer pipes set down. Each is over five
metres long and weighs 22 tons. They are precisely aligned to frame the sun as it rises and sets at the
summer and winter solstices. Holt had holes bored in the tops of the pipes in the shape of various
constellations. Whenever the fierce desert sun shines through them, the constellations are projected onto
the floor of the tunnels. The pipes are big enough to stand in. Their circular apertures frame the view of the
surrounding desert landscape – a scene unchanged for millions of years. The pipes act as a viewing aid, but
also as a sundial. Like a contemporary version of Stonehenge, they mark the progress of the seasons,
moving with the rotation of the Earth and catching the rays of the sun at regular intervals.
Free Floating Tree in the gallery staircase
Zeger Reyers has created a site-specific artwork to be displayed in the middle of Kunsthal KAdE’s split level
staircase for the duration of this exhibition. In Free Floating Tree, a living tree will be positioned horizontally
within the staircase. Tipping the tree away from its natural direction of growth will create in the viewer the
sense that its growth and potential are frustrated. At the same time, however, an artificial light source will be
used to induce the tree to grow in that direction. The work also plays with current ideas about cultivated
greenery.
Free Floating Tree will remain on display – although in a slightly different form – in Kunsthal KAdE’s next
exhibition, The Way Things Go (about cause and effect, expected 23 January – 8 May 2016).
Breaking Ground: Broken Circle / Spiral Hill
Visitors will have the chance to view Breaking Ground: Broken Circle / Spiral Hill (1971-2011) in the film
projection space. American artist Robert Smithson created his world-famous artwork Broken Circle/ Spiral
Hill (1971) in a sand quarry belonging to the De Boer company in Emmerschans, near Emmen (The
Netherlands). As part of this ‘earthwork’ project, Smithson recorded its construction in video images shot
from a plane or helicopter. The artist’s early death in 1973 prevented the completion of the video. However,
forty years after the completion of the sculpture in Emmen, the video was finally made, with his widow
Nancy Holt editing the images and working in partnership with SKOR / Foundation for Art in Public Domain
(Theo Tegelaars) and a Dutch crew. It uses a combination of original material shot in 1971 and new images
and sound recordings made in Emmen in the spring of 2011.
Spirit of land art pioneers living on in artists of today
The spirit of the original land art pioneers informs the work of innumerable artists of today. It is easy to spot.
It is evident, for instance, in Guido van der Werve’s magical video Nummer Acht: Everything is going to be
alright (2007), in which the artist walks alone over a frozen sea, followed close on his heels by a huge
icebreaker. Or in Francis Alÿs’s When Faith Moves Mountains (a work made in 2002 just outside Lima,
Peru) or in Mexican artist Mario Garcia Torres’s film The Schlieren Plot. For more information on each of
these works, simply click on its title.
Education and accompanying events programme
Events programme
The Expedition Land Art exhibition will be accompanied by a range of events catering for people of all ages.
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Every Sunday at 1 p.m.: comprehensive guided tour of the exhibition.
4 October: excursion to Marinus Boezem’s Green Cathedral and other sites, organised in
partnership with Land Art Flevoland.
Every Thursday evening from September on: Kunsthal KAdE LIVE. This varied weekly programme
of events in KAdECafé will include singer/songwriter evenings, performances by jazz duo Hop &
Van den Boomen, and a range of talks. Four of these Thursday evening events will be devoted
entirely to the Expedition Land Art exhibition.
24 September: guest curator Sandra Smallenburg talking about the writing of her book Expeditie
land art.
29 October: Sandra Smallenburg interviewing artists Marinus Boezem and Zeger Reyers.
26 November: evening about Land Art Live, a project in which contemporary artists have been
invited to make a temporary intervention in response to one of the six examples of land art in the
province of Flevoland. A number of the artists concerned will talk about their projects.
17 December: Aurora Tang, a programme manager at the Center for Land Use Interpretation in
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Los Angeles, talking about the position of land art in the United States.
During these four land art events, the exhibition will be open to the public all evening.
Various workshops giving children (and adults) the chance to create their own pieces of land art.
Our museum educators will also take children on exciting expeditions to discover the secrets of the
exhibition (a quest from which parents are firmly excluded!).
More information about all these activities will be on our website soon.
Education
Throughout the Expedition Land Art exhibition, there will be a chance for school kids to experience land art
in all its facets. Play the touchy-feely game and find out more about land art pioneers and the materials they
used. Settle down at the drawing board and plan your own land art project on paper. Or get behind the
wheel of a mechanical excavator and build an artwork against the background of a huge desert landscape.
Summary
Expedition Land Art
Land art in the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands
An exhibition entitled Expedition Land Art is being held from 19 September 2015 to 3 January 2016
(inclusive) at Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort. The exhibition marks the publication of a Dutch-language book
of the same name: Expeditie land art by Sandra Smallenburg. Although museum collections in the
Netherlands contain many works by leading international land artists, this is the first ever major exhibition on
the land art movement to be held anywhere in the Netherlands. The main emphasis in the show will be on
six pioneering land artists (Nancy Holt, Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, James Turrell, Richard Long and
Marinus Boezem) and their influence on a younger generation (Francis Alÿs, Tacita Dean, Mario Garcia
Torres, Zeger Reyers, Pierre Bismuth and Lara Almarcegui). There will be an extensive programme of
accompanying events, including talks, interviews with artists and an excursion organised in partnership with
Land Art Flevoland.
Expeditie land art by Sandra Smallenburg - De Bezige Bij
Publishers
Landscapes have inspired artists for centuries, but it is only since the 1960s that artists have used the
landscape itself to make art. In her book Expeditie land art, Sandra Smallenburg goes in search of these
monumental but often hard-to-track-down examples of land art. She travels through remote and uninhabited
regions of America to discover works of almost unimaginable scale: sculptures the height of the Empire
State Building or with the footprint of an average town. She finds works of art in salt lakes, on lofty plateaux
and inside an extinct volcano. But fascinating examples of land art can also be seen closer to home. Dotted
around the Netherlands – in places like the Flevopolder, the peat moors of Drenthe and the dunes near The
Hague – are top pieces by well-known contemporary artists like Richard Serra, Robert Smithson and James
Turrell.
Land art is art that requires the viewer to make a journey. It is the quest to find it that makes the experience
of land art so unforgettable.
Sandra Smallenburg is art editor at Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad and has worked in the past as
an art critic for American magazines ARTnews and Artforum.
Requests for proofs, advance review copies and/or interviews should be addressed to the publisher:
Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Alice Wubbels: +31 (0)20 305 9205 | [email protected]
Sandra Smallenburg – Expeditie land art
due out 10 September | Hardcover | 208 pp. | approx. € 34.90
ISBN 978 90 234 9201 6
www.debezigebij.nl | www.kunsthalkade.nl
The book launch will take place at the exhibition opening on Friday 18 September. For press invitations,
please contact Udo Feitsma: [email protected]
Note to editors, not for publication
For further information and/or copyright free images, please contact:
Udo Feitsma
E: [email protected]
T: +31 (0)33 422 50 38/ (0)6 50 61 66 88
The press preview/opening of the Expedition land art exhibition will be held on Friday 18 September 2015.
The launch of Sandra Smallenburg’s book Expeditie land art will take place during the opening.
Sponsors
Alle activiteiten van KAdE worden financieel mede mogelijk gemaakt door de
Gemeente Amersfoort
Thanks to:
Mondriaan Fund
Lucas Teeuwiszen rietdekkers, Huizen
Naturalis, Biodiversity Center, Leiden
Admission: € 10,Museumkaart: free of charge
CJP: € 5,Students: € 5,(upon presentation of a valid id)
Till 18 years free of charge
Visitors'address
Eemplein 77
3812 EA Amersfoort
The Netherlands
T 033 422 50 30
Postal address
Postbus 699
3800 AR Amersfoort
The Netherlands
www.kunsthalkade.nl
Kunsthal KAdE is part of the
Foundation Amersfoort in C, as
are Museum Flehite, Architecture
center FASadE and
Note to the editor, not for
publication:
Programme Friday 18
September:
16.00 hrs: Reception
16.30 hrs: Word of welcome by
Robbert Roos (director Kunsthal
KAdE)
16.35 hrs: Introduction by Sandra
Smallenburg (guest curator
Expedition land art/ visual arts
editor NRC Handelsblad
Presentation of the first copy of
Expedition land art to dr Anja
Novak
16.45 hrs: Speech & official
opening by dr.Anja Novak (art
historian and lecturer at the
University of Amsterdam)
Mondriaanhuis
Kunsthal KAdE is situated at the
Eemplein, Eemhuis.
Visit exhibition till 18.30 hrs.