Richard Long's Big Work On A Small Scale

For an artist who treads gently, Richard Long has made a big impression on the landscape since the first work in this exhibition, 'A Line Made By Walking', was exhibited in 1967.

That first work set Long's agenda for the rest of his career; an element of performance, landscape celebrated through simple mark-making, and the whole 'sculpture' recorded in clean, elegant photography and text. Long took a train journey from his studio in the sculpture department at St Martins School of Art, found a field, and marked a line by walking up and down, flattening the grass.  He photographed the line, framed it and added a caption in a clean, sans-serif font. Since then, Long's walks have got longer, his lines have got bigger, his marks bolder, and the text sometimes larger, but the work has essentially been within that same framework. Long does vary his work of course; some walks are recorded in lines drawn on a map. Some landscapes are altered by creating a circle of drfitwood, a line of stones, or a shape raised from a beach of pebbles - and that is recorded. And sometimes, Long brings rocks or mud he has found on a walk back to the gallery to create a new work - it's not explained how.

Six of those stone works are brought together here, in the first time the Tate has opened the central galleries as one giant space for a solo show. There's a rugged, angular rectangle of grey slate, and a dramatic blood-red slate circle. A dull and heavy ellipse of basalt. And perhaps the most lively of all, 'Norfolk Flint Circle', a massive white shape low on the gallery floor and with it's gentle bumps, not unlike a flock of stone sheep.

There are also four of Long's wall paintings, in which he turns solid clay and rock into liquid paint and applies it directly to the gallery walls. Outside the main exhibition is 'From Beginning to End' a long, red-brown painting made with mud splashed and smeared by the artist's hands. 'Heaven' and 'Earth', the two works which give the exhibition its title, are more formal abstract paintings, with rectangles painted in different shades of River Avon mud. Again, the process is visible, with drips and splashes left on the gallery walls and floors.

The best of these works though is 'White Water Line', a massive painting using white Cornish china clay on a back background. High on the wall are soft, smeared shapes like clouds and from this area the clay is poured down the wall, running like rain to the floor. This work benefits from masterful curation of this exhibition; it can be seen framed by wall-sized text works, Long's other record of a walk.

In these, text in plain and simple typefaces is centred on the wall - red and black text on white walls, or red and white text on a black wall, or in one (shocking) example white text on a blue wall. These create abstract text poems celebrating things seen, found or experienced - or in other cases, they are, Fluxus-like, the instructions for a walk or action. It is possible, of course, that these are just instructions, ideas for actions uncompleted.

In every case, Long's work is about two things; he is a landscape artist, celebrating the drama of landscapes across the world. In this, he often finding global themes, making Snowdonia essentially the same as the Himalayas.

But Long finds the global because his work is also a celebration of man's place in that landscape. Long's work - whether it's visiting 'A Hundred Tors in a Hundred Hours', exploring the history of mankind from 'Megalithic to Subatomic' or 'Windmill Hill to Coalbrookdale', or celebrating the solar cycle in 'Walking to a Lunar Eclipse' or a walk from sunrise at Stonehenge to sunset at Glastonbury, is based around a very human scale of measurement.

Any work by Long, however big it appears to be, is in fact only human in size. And that's what makes work which could be conceptual, intellectual and dry so simple, understandable and enjoyable.

Richard Long - Heaven and Earth - is at Tate Britain from 3rd June - 6th September 09.