Critique on Richard Long's 'Cornish Slate Ellipse'

 Critique on Richard Long's 'Cornish Slate Ellipse'. 

                   Cornish Slate Ellipse, 2009, Slate, Dimensions-7200 x 3400mm, Yorkshire Gallery.

On a recent visit to The Barbara Hepworth Gallery in Yorkshire I came across an artist who I was drawn to immediately. As I stepped in to Richard Long’s room I was instantly drawn and intrigued with his sculptural art that was laid out on the floor.  I firstly became very interested with the ‘Cornish Slate Ellipse’ this contained many rectangular shaped slate bricks arranged to form an oval. Richard Long started by placing each slate block from one side of the oval to the other side until he felt that the work achieved what it was set out to. It has been know that Richard long creates his work related to the landscape either made on his walks or in a gallery made as a response to a particular place. When I first saw the piece I didn’t think that it belonged in a Gallery. I believe that it needed to be out in the open because not only were the materials natural but I felt that the piece was forced into the certain shape and that it had no sense of freedom, yes there was space between the blocks but they could not move. I thought that if the piece was outside there would be more sense of freedom around the sculpture and not caged up into a boxed room. As I looked closer into it and found out that Richard Long creates his work which was suited to the particular place it laid, I began to think maybe it does suit here with the geometric shapes which had four straight sides which echoed the walls in the gallery room and also of the gallery building itself, the sculpture is also level. There is not one slate out of place and raised just like the building level floors with level walls all flat precise and smooth. The only thing I felt was forced was the circle, but then again a circle is a natural shape just look at the sun or the shape of a tree trunk. A thing that struck me was how organised the sculpture looked; Richard Long must have an eye for precision he randomly placed these slate blocks but managed to create an orderly pattern. Normally the first thing to attract me to an art work would be the colour but this wasn’t the case with this one. The colours came naturally from the slate and nothing was altered. The colours again I feel relate to the surroundings. The White would be where the light reflects through the window, off the walls and on the top of the slate bricks. The black shows shadows where there are gaps between the blocks the same as if we have a shadow in the gallery and lastly the mixture of the white and black to form grey which relates to the colour of concrete which the building is made out of. Now if I may return to the layout of the bricks. I felt the slate bricks combined created an organised pattern which reminded of a jigsaw, each individual piece is positioned in a certain way to achieve the best fit and shows the best outcome. I thought it also resembled a broken mirror. Maybe the mirror could have been circular to start off with but then it could have been forcefully smashed on the floor or by accident, to split into many sharp edgy pieces that represent the slate. Then Richard Long comes along and picks up these pieces and puts them together to form the same shape that was the mirror to start off with, but there is a problem the broken shards of glass do not join completely because some of the pieces are too small to place back together so there are gaps just like in the ‘Cornish Slate Ellipse’ which Richard Long created.