When Riedelsheimer suggested another film, Goldsworthy wondered if it might correct the pastoral misconception. The day I start preaching through my work is the day it stops having any meaning.” “If I was thinking: ‘I’m going to make a work that’s going to address an environmental or ecological issue,’ I wouldn’t make a great work. Goldsworthy also rejects the view that his art should explicitly tackle environmental problems. They have had this huge historical and environmental impact but they are portrayed as woolly and cute. This rather romantic view of me off by myself, with cows looking at me – well, the cows are meat and the sheep are wool and there are no trees here because the sheep are eating them all. “As a place to work, it is not a place of therapy and peace, it’s intellectually and physically challenging. “I certainly felt that was a misrepresentation because for me there is a strong social nature to the landscape,” he says. The film was an unexpected success, but it made Goldsworthy squirm, not least for promoting an image of him as a pastoralist and guru of the wild. Seventeen years ago, his working life was beautifully documented by German film-maker Thomas Riedelsheimer in Rivers and Tides. I’m taking big risks with no safety net.” These performance pieces are uncomfortable for an artist of late middle-age – Goldsworthy is not a performer “The biggest failure is to make a work that is safe, that doesn’t take a risk. “Most of them I couldn’t have even conceived of 10 years ago, works that take me way out of my comfort zone.” He leans forward, suddenly intense. “The ideas I’m having now are far better than anything I’ve thought of before,” he says. There are “one or two” of those, he laughs – such as his “big red hill” planted with Virginia creeper, which was first devised in 1984 and finally made in Ohio last year – but most, he insists, are new and challenging. Photograph: Andy Goldsworthyįaced with such opportunities, experienced artists may reproduce their greatest hits, or realise ideas they have “hawked around for many years”, as Goldsworthy puts it.
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