THE CONTEXT OF THE PROJECT

Our view of the Cumbrian environment has been conditioned to accept the land as 'landscape'. Hundreds of years of artistic interpretation, especially since the visual conventions of the eighteenth century, have led us to see it as 'picturesque' and 'romantic'. Andy Goldsworthy's Sheepfolds public art project challenges and even reverses that tradition in the sense that it restores our view of Cumbria as land - used, changing, vulnerable and diverse. His art is determined by an understanding of Cumbria's geography and history, not simply by the aesthetic conventions of easel painters. As an artwork, Sheepfolds relies for its meaning and beauty on its relationship to this working environment and on the sheer scale of the project. The works themselves are sited in places of great contrast, for example, on a remote barren fellside, or the outskirts of a village, within a town or close to a six-lane motorway. Sometimes the folds are isolated, sometimes in pairs, sometimes spread along an old drove route. Andy Goldsworthy's use of the craft skills of dry stone walling also has social and political associations and underlines the continuous and on-going changes in farming practice in the region.