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Film Review: Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time
Reviewer: Marcos Moret
My parents and grandparents would occasionally take my sister and me to a place called Woodwell, near Silverdale in the Lake
District of Cumbria, England. There, in a woodland clearing amongst the dappled sunlight piercing the tree canopy, I would
become immersed in the world beneath me: a large man-made shallow well. Long abandoned from whatever purpose it had once
served, it was now overridden by pondweed. Above, within, and underneath that pondweed hid, grazed, and skittered all sorts of
fascinating creatures: tadpoles, minnows, sticklebacks, pond skaters, ram’s horn snails, water boatmen. Dragonflies and
damselflies, metamorphosed into their air-bound adult versions, buzzed around like brilliantly agitated miniature
helicopters. In an adjacent field, cattle calmly grazed in the spring sunlight. And occasionally a woodpecker could be
heard rattattatting in its search for bark-burrowed grubs. All the while, a little way up the hillside where the clearing
met rock face, there arose a glugging and a tinkling of spring water into a smaller rock-carved, bath-shaped pool, perhaps
once quenching the thirsts of shepherds and their flocks. Yellow-net-on-a-bamboo-cane in hand, and muddy water-filled
bucket at the ready, such was the setting of my hunt for watery creepy crawly bounty.
I tell you this because Goldsworthy’s film evokes feelings such as those I then felt - innocent calm, child-like
fascination, and a worry-free oneness with nature. ‘Rivers and Tides’ is a documentary of a man who has not lost those
feelings, and who explores and embraces them through an adulthood extension of that childhood play – he is now grown,
grey-templed, married and with children – in the form of art. He lives in a village in Scotland where he has spent a very
many years, where most of his good friends live, and nearby which he finds the materials for his art. We find Goldsworthy
on an abandoned stone-scattered beach, where a river meets the sea, and watch as he builds what is an approximation of an
igloo or perhaps a convex whirlpool (as a gnarled onlooker postures), out of hundreds of sticks. The end result is
strikingly beautiful. Or rather, we never see the end result - as the tide comes in, the structure floats out to sea,
disintegrating stick by stick. This is the essence of Goldsworthy’ art; a dialogue on time and nature, the way in which
his work changes (is destroyed, relocated, or transformed in a myriad of other ways) over hours, days, or years.
We follow Goldsworthy as he works in France, the United States, and England. Each of the fifteen-odd projects we are privy
to is striking in its simplicity, grace, and originality. His leitmotif, a winding shape reminiscent of a meandering river,
runs throughout many of his pieces. A chain of leaves snakes its way down a stream. An icy thread seemingly cuts its way
through a seashore rock. A thin green vine appears, miraculously, to pierce its way through tree branches as it winds it
way into the canopy. A stone wall emerges from a river, improbably and fantastically ribboning its way between trees before
disappearing into the earth. Goldsworthy explains this shape as being a physical manifestation of his belief in a life
force running through the earth, us, and the rest of nature. His reverence for this pulsating force – often a thing of
beauty, but sometimes a thing of darkness – explains the way he works, using only the natural materials of the fields,
forests, and shores, and always working manually, rarely with any instrument apart from his own hands. And what hands.
The cameraman on many occasions lingers on them - worn, battered, black-nailed, cut up. He explains that he associates
working with bracken with having bleeding hands, and how he needs to use his bare hands when working with ice because with
gloves he would lack the requisite sensitivity, even if his hands are painfully cold.
Goldsworthy spends half the time lying or kneeling in the dirt, a communion of sorts. He tells us that he likes to spend
time on his own, that he’s not all that comfortable with people at times. He speaks slowly, falteringly, and with a
sensitivity of intonation that betrays the emotional depths lying just beneath the surface. He understands the circle of
life; the cycle of birth and death, nature’s connection to the ground from which it comes and to which it will return.
From this he gains his inspiration and love for nature, but perhaps also the tenable sadness welling within his eyes.
Goldsworthy is at times unable to express eloquently the way he feels about his work. But this is in no way a danger to
his credibility as an artist (as it might be with others). The passion, mule-headed dedication, and creative genius
twisting their way out of his soul and adopting physical form, however temporarily, are all too obvious.
Released by Roxie Releasing. Director Thomas Riedelsheimer. Producer Annedore V. Donop. Cinematographer Thomas
Riedelsheimer. Editor Thomas Riedelsheimer. Music Fred Frith. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.
At the time of publication this film was showing at Cinema Village, 22 E 12th St between Fifth Ave and University Pl,
New York. 212 924 3363.
PUBLISHED: Wednesday 9 April 2003
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