Andy Goldsworthy: Ice and Snow Drawings and Throws

‘The drawings in this exhibition are made with snowballs, ice and natural materials from different locations: Borrowdale graphite, Borrowdale slate, Derwent water, Drumlanrig clay, Pit clay, and earth from the source of the Scaur River, Penport.  The process of the snowballs melting on watercolour paper and forming the drawings echoes processes in the natural world: erosion, sedimentation, ice and flow.  The visual structure and colour qualities thus produced are extraordinary.

The Ice and Snow Drawings have two main sources.  The first Arctic Snowballs of 1989 resulted from an experience Goldsworthy had while out hunting with his Inuit guide Luti and his son.  Coming across a breathing hole in the ice pack, Luti circled around at a distance, moving towards the hole, while his son stood ready with his gun in anticipation of the rising seal.

Dark blood dripped and trailed in the snow as the sledge moved off, carrying carcass and hunters.  The seal was caught by the hunter’s instinct and knowledge of its survival habits.

The second source for the Snowball Drawings was an experience made by Goldsworthy following an exhibition at Glasgow’s Tramway.  His large snowballs, which gradually melted during the course of the show, left an afterimage caused by the ‘impurities’ in the snowball.

On another occasion in the Arctic, Goldsworthy and his guides came across a polar bear’s tracks in the snow.  Running parallel to this were the tracks of a mechanised skidou.  Luti’s comment was simply: “dead bear.”

This experience of immersion in the natural world continues with the snowball drawings, but other questions arise.  In the drawing with graphite from Borrowdale – one of the main sources for this material – there is a dual process: on the one hand natural, on the other with the artist’s participation.  Who, or what, is making the drawing?

Such questions lead on to the conference held at the Botanic Gardens during the Edinburgh Festival, which looked at order, chaos and creativity in the arts and science.  Goldsworthy was the key speaker at the conference, the themes of which also embrace The Throws, a set of Goldsworthy photographs in which spontaneity, change and order are invoked and juggled.’

Exhibition text – 24 July 1992

Publication held by National Library of Scotland