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Rock Fall Echo Dust
Artist
Hamish Fulton
(English, born 1946)
Date1988
MediumAcrylic paint (artist grade) on site specific wall
DimensionsVariable
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase
Object number2005.2
Status
Not on viewCopyright© Hamish Fulton
Category
Label TextSince 1969, Hamish Fulton’s art has stemmed from journeys he has made in various landscapes. The artist, who has walked thousands of miles on five continents, refers to his artworks simply as “walks.” As a student at St. Martin’s School of Art in London from 1966 to 1968, Fulton was one of a new generation of sculptors, including Richard Long and the performance art duo Gilbert & George, who strove to reorient British sculpture away from the Surrealism of Henry Moore and the industrial formalism of Anthony Caro toward a more conceptual approach to artmaking. Fulton’s crucial decision in those years was to not make art isolated in his studio but to carry his studio on his back (tent, camping utensils, journal, pen, and camera) and engage the world on foot.
He represents each walk through words alone or in combination with photographs, drawings, or watercolors, distilling his experience of a given journey into fundamental facts about location, time, distance, and weather that he records in a diary. The resulting artwork is part document, part poetic memory.
Rock Fall Echo Dust, 1988, like many of Fulton’s works, includes an annotation describing the journey that resulted in the piece: A Twelve and a Half Day Walk on Baffin Island Arctic Canada Summer 1988. The scale and commercial finish of this graphic work lie in contrast to the natural image that inspired it. Fulton has said, “My art is about specific places and particular events that are not present in the gallery. The given information is very minimal. My hope is that the viewer will create a feeling, an impression in his or her own mind, based on whatever my art can provide.” In this case, the artist seeks to relate the fleeting experience of witnessing a rock fall and the resulting noise and dust.
He represents each walk through words alone or in combination with photographs, drawings, or watercolors, distilling his experience of a given journey into fundamental facts about location, time, distance, and weather that he records in a diary. The resulting artwork is part document, part poetic memory.
Rock Fall Echo Dust, 1988, like many of Fulton’s works, includes an annotation describing the journey that resulted in the piece: A Twelve and a Half Day Walk on Baffin Island Arctic Canada Summer 1988. The scale and commercial finish of this graphic work lie in contrast to the natural image that inspired it. Fulton has said, “My art is about specific places and particular events that are not present in the gallery. The given information is very minimal. My hope is that the viewer will create a feeling, an impression in his or her own mind, based on whatever my art can provide.” In this case, the artist seeks to relate the fleeting experience of witnessing a rock fall and the resulting noise and dust.
