Place: Land and Nature

A Sense of PlaceLecture 2

Andrea Peach

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation

Our life is frittered away by detail … simplify, simplify

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Wittgenstein’s Cottage, Lake Eidsvatnet, Norway

The spirit of place lies in its landscape E. Relph Place and Placelessness

Land is a natural phenomenon

‘Landscape’ is a cultural construct

Casper David FriedrichWanderer above the Sea of Fog1818

Thomas GainsboroughMr and Mrs Andrews1818

Stourhead Wiltshire (Henry Hoare 1720)

Little Sparta, Stoneypath (Ian Hamilton Finlay)

Karen KnorrPleasures of the Imagination: Connoisseurs1986

Timothy O’SullivanWitches Rocks, Utah1869

Rick DingusWitches Rocks, Utah1978

Ansel AdamsMonolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, California, 1927

Joel MeyerowitzBroadway and West 46th Street, New York, 1976

Guiseppe PenoneThe Tree will Continue to Grow except at this Point,1968-78

Andy Goldsworthy

Things are continuously in a state of change or flow and everything, even stone, has a sense of movement about it.

One’s mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion, mental rivers wear away abstract banks, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought, ideas decompose into stones of unknowing

Robert Smithson

Robert SmithsonSpiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah1969-70

Christo and Jean ClaudeSurrounded Islands Biscayne Bay, Miami1980-1983

Richard Long

I like the idea of using the landwithout possessing it

A Circle in Alaska1977

Landscape is a natural scene mediated by culture.

It is both a represented and presented space, both a signifier and a signified.

WJT Mitchell

Jim PartridgeGray’s Seat Lancaster2000

Elsje van KeppelAnimal Vegetable 1996

The processes I use are

often metaphors for nature’s

processes, one which

naturally weather and create

a surface. This object is

not specifically about the

landscape ... But is was

stimulated by the experience

of being in a particular

place at a particular time.

It is about an almost

indescribable feeling of

fragility and ever

vulnerability

Roni HornBecoming a Landscape, Iceland, 1999-2001

Iceland taught me that each place is a unique location of change.

No place is a fixed or concluded thing.

Dalziel and ScullionModern NatureTyrebagger Hill, Aberdeenshire2000

Olafur EliassonThe Weather ProjectTate Modern, London

2003

The view is not

separate from

the viewer

Simon StarlingIsland for Weeds (Prototype)2003

Simon StarlingTabernas Desert Run Turner Prize 2005-06

The real voyage of discovery consists in not seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes

Marcel Proust

For the Seminar:

Bring an object, text or image, which you feel is either directly or indirectly influenced by either ‘land’ or ‘nature’.

Come prepared to discuss how this contributes to our programme theme of ‘a sense of place’.