Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years interview

18.08.2025

Andy Goldsworthy, 'Wool Clouds', (2019).

Few artists have altered the physical landscape more than Andy Goldsworthy. For half a century now, the Cheshire-born, Scotland-based sculptor has used natural materials to alter outdoor spaces in ways that are both temporary and monumental.

To mark the occasion, Goldsworthy’s work is celebrated at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh with Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years, which mixes old and new creations to create its own environment.

Prior to this, in April, Jupiter Artland sculpture park outside Edinburgh opened Work Begat Work: Ian Hamilton Finlay & Andy Goldsworthy. The exhibition presents Goldsworthy’s permanent commissions alongside work by Finlay, bringing together two of Jupiter Artland’s great inspirations in tandem. The duo also both star at the National Galleries of Scotland this year, with Goldsworthy’s upcoming RSA show and a display of Finlay’s work at Modern Two, marking the centenary of his birth.

Speaking at the end of a working day at his Dumfriesshire home, Goldsworthy says of Fifty Years: "We've been working on it now for a couple of years, so it's a bit more than an exhibition. There will be quite a bit of early work, and a lot of new work as well, but it's new work that couldn't have been made other than after working for 50 years. Making the things I'm making now is so bound up in the things that I've done previously, so it's not a conventional retrospective."

Initial selections of older material are being sourced by Goldsworthy’s partner and studio manager, Tina Fiske. These will sit in the RSA’s lower gallery, with new work upstairs. "I found it difficult to even think about the older stuff," Goldsworthy says. "I'm much more interested in what I'm making upstairs. That's where my love and my passion and my energy are. Once Tina has made a selection, I will look at it. That will be interesting, because I think, for a retrospective, you have to stand aside from it and look at it from a different view."

Goldsworthy adds: "They're massive galleries in the RSA, and the new works are a response to those spaces. They're new works that are going to be created there, and a lot of them will evolve. I'm collecting the materials that I will use in the installations, which is also a way of figuring out what I want to make. That's the process that I love most; going around, looking for things, finding things. As I think I said in the interview in the catalogue, collecting materials is a way of collecting ideas. The final ingredient of the work is the room. It won’t just be objects to sit in the room. They connect with the nature of the building and hopefully will reveal that nature in some way."

Over at Jupiter Artland, they have four works by Goldsworthy on display: ‘Stone House (Bonnington)’ (2009); ‘Clay Tree Wall’ (2009); ‘Stone Coppice’ (2009); and ‘Coppice Room’ (2012). "I'm very proud of the works that I made at Jupiter Artland," he says. "That time really marked a moment where things just rose a few levels, and the works became stronger." And while Goldsworthy expresses delight at being shown alongside Ian Hamilton Finlay, he also points out the differences between the two of them.

"I love Ian's work, but I would say that he had a very different way of dealing with land than I have, but isn't that wonderful? There was a time when there was Ian Hamilton Finlay, myself and Charles Jencks all working in this kind of area, and you couldn't get three more different ways of dealing with it. I thought that was just fantastic, and I was always surprised that nothing was made of it. When the university was set up here in Dumfries, I suggested they should run a course around those three artists as a way of examining the different ways of looking at the land and dealing with the land, and the different possibilities of what can happen."

While Goldsworthy and Finlay never met in person, there was contact. "I had a brief conversation on the phone with him once when I wanted to go and see him," recalls Goldsworthy. "I had some American friends from a gallery with me, and he said, “Andy, you can come, but the people from the gallery can't”, because at the time he was banning art-world people from visiting him."

Like Finlay, Goldsworthy is robust regarding the social aspects of the land where he works and creates. "The perception is I'm this kind of romantic figure wandering lonely over the landscape, dropping a few leaves here and there, but that's not what it's like,’ he says. ‘I work in a very socially rich landscape that has a strong social nature to it. People are bound up in that and I acknowledge that in the work. Not only through what I make, but I also realise that I am part of that as well."

Neil Cooper is a writer and critic based in Edinburgh.

Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years is exhibited at The Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh until 2 November, 2025.

Work Begat Work: Ian Hamilton Finlay and Andy Goldsworthy is exhibited at Jupiter Artland, near Edinburgh, until 28 September, 2025.