Thinking from materials in Andy Goldsworthy’s environmental artworks

Shobeiri, S.A.

By adopting posthuman ecology as its methodological framework, the author of this paper examines how British environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy’s conceptualization of nature can radically undermine the nature/culture dichotomy. To do this, the author will survey the first and the second waves of environmental art movement, also known as Representational and Performative Environmental Art, in order to situate Goldsworthy’s small-scale works within the latter. Then, by embracing Tim Ingold’s idea of “thinking through making” within materialist ecology, the author puts forward that Goldsworthy’s environmental art can resist the old-age hylomorphic model by using intuitiveness and improvisation as its strategy. In doing so, Goldsworthy eschews from turning nature into a representation that is to be manipulated by human subjectivity from afar, precisely by thinking from natural materials rather than about them, thus inviting us to conceive all human and nonhuman organisms as an...Show moreBy adopting posthuman ecology as its methodological framework, the author of this paper examines how British environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy’s conceptualization of nature can radically undermine the nature/culture dichotomy. To do this, the author will survey the first and the second waves of environmental art movement, also known as Representational and Performative Environmental Art, in order to situate Goldsworthy’s small-scale works within the latter. Then, by embracing Tim Ingold’s idea of “thinking through making” within materialist ecology, the author puts forward that Goldsworthy’s environmental art can resist the old-age hylomorphic model by using intuitiveness and improvisation as its strategy. In doing so, Goldsworthy eschews from turning nature into a representation that is to be manipulated by human subjectivity from afar, precisely by thinking from natural materials rather than about them, thus inviting us to conceive all human and nonhuman organisms as an intricate conglomerate of “leaky things” in an endless flux of ecological becoming.
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Thinking from materials in Andy Goldsworthy’s environmental artworks