Long, Richard

Long, Richard (b Bristol, 2 June 1945). British avant-garde artist whose work brings together sculpture, Conceptual art, and Land art. Since 1967 his artistic activity has been based on long solitary walks that he makes through landscapes, initially in Britain, and from 1969 also abroad, often in remote or inhospitable terrain. Sometimes he collects objects such as stones and twigs on these walks and brings them into a gallery, where he arranges them into designs, usually circles or other fairly simple geometrical shapes (Circle of Sticks, 1973, Slate Circle, 1979, both Tate, London). He also creates such works in their original settings, and documents his walks with photographs, texts, and maps. Long has an international reputation (as early as 1976 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale) and has attracted a great deal of commentary, much of it laudatory, although the critic Peter Fuller described his work as ‘the barren arrangement of gathered stones’. In 1989 Long won the Turner Prize.