Two rooms featuring eight works: two sculptures (Somerset Willow Line, 1980 and Cut Slate Ellipse, 2005); four works on paper (A Line Made by Walking, 1967; In the Cloud, 1991; Cycle of Ten Mud Drawings, 1988; River Avon Mud Slow Circle, 2005); a multiple (Nile (Papers of River Muds)), 1999; and the River Avon Book.

Richard Long first came to prominence during the late 1960s. He leads a generation of distinguished British artists who wanted to extend the possibilities of sculpture beyond the confines of work in traditional materials.

Long’s work is rooted in his deep affinity with nature, developed during solitary walks. Most of these take him through uncultivated areas, in Britain or as far afield as Nepal, Africa, Mexico and Bolivia. While travelling he sets himself specific tasks, such as walking a straight line for a predetermined distance, following the source of a river, or picking up and then dropping stones at certain intervals along the way. Long never makes permanent alterations to the landscapes he passes through. Instead he adjusts nature’s placement of rocks or wood to form simple, geometric shapes, sometimes working in the landscape and sometimes bringing the natural materials into a gallery.

Somerset Willow Line 1980 and Cut Slate Ellipse 2005, both included in The d’Offay Donation, are two key examples of works made specifically for an architectural setting. He documents his journeys with photographs, maps, wall drawings and printed statements, which evoke his personal responses to the landscapes. He has said that his aim is to explore ‘relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement’. However, Long has also said that whereas photographs and text works feed the imagination, sculptures feed the sense. Walking and works made in the landscape are only half the story. Urban and rural worlds are mutually dependent and have equal significance in his work.