The focus of Richard Long's new exhibition at 24 Dering Street is a group of text works arising from walks in Ecuador, Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland. Eight are framed and two are printed directly on the gallery walls, continuing a practice used in the 1960s and 70s. He has said of these works:

They are descriptions of the world which are outside the parameters of painting and sculpture. Text is the simplest and most elegant way to present a particular idea, which could be a walk or a sculpture, or both.

A fundamental theme of these text works is the relationship between the artist, the Earth and the Sun. Discussing them, Richard Long remarked:

Each day is a solar event. Time is measured in days, and walking time can be the measure of a country. WATER WALK also measures distance by rivers. A LINE OF 33 STONES, A WALK OF 33 DAYS measures the days by stones. A CIRCLE OF MIDDAYS, a 12 day clockwise walk of 360 miles, being at a new point around an imaginary circle at each midday, is a text work which becomes an emblematic distillation of time itself.

SPEED OF THE SOUND OF LONELINESS is a metaphor and meditation upon speed and scale. The title is taken from a song written by John Prine and sung by the country singer Nanci Griffith.
FROM UNCERTAINTY TO CERTAINTY is a narrative of a dispersed sculpture which uses language, stones, chance, walking and Dartmoor.

WALKING TO A SOLAR ECLIPSE is about time and place. It makes use of a cosmic event as a unique moment which determines the destination of a walk. By contrast, in the only photo work in the show, SINCHOLAGUA SUMMIT SHADOW STONES, the shadow of the volcano in Ecuador could pass across the artist's stone circle after sunrise many times a year.

Richard Long has made two other new works for the exhibition: a sculpture of chalk pebbles, CHALK PEBBLES ELLIPSE and a wall work, RIVER AVON MUD ELLIPSE. The mud from the River Avon is formed by the flow of tides, which themselves are caused by the gravitational forces and movement of the moon over geological time.

Forthcoming exhibitions
The Royal West of England Academy in Bristol will show a selected retrospective of Long's work in May this year. An installation by him will be part of the inaugural hang at the Tate Modern, Bankside. Richard Long will have two public sculptures in New York this Spring, when three text works and a River Avon mud drawing will be displayed in the New York subway trains.

Visit Richard Long's website at www.richardlong.org