Arnolfini bristol richard long biography

Fifteen years after Richard Long’s last exhibition of any scale in his native Bristol, he is the Arnolfini’s showcase artist during the city’s 2015 European Green Capital celebrations. Director Kate Brindley speaks to Studio International about the exhibition

“I am interested in the universals: stones, water, mud, hands, days, circles, symmetry, gravity, footpaths, and roads.”¹

Richard Long was born and bred in Bristol and still lives in his native city, so it is not surprising that elements of the local landscape are integral to many of his works.

For his exhibition at Arnolfini, which forms part of the city’s celebrations as 2015 European Green Capital, Long has selected some of his favourite photographs and text pieces, many of them with local flavour, from the last 50 years of his career. A number of key works have been recreated inside the gallery and one wall has been given over to a new painting, Muddy Water Falls (2015), using mud from the R