It pays to think big if you’re an artist. You know, zoom out and try to get away from the minutiae of life, the tedium of the everyday, and think on a bit more of a universal scale instead. Land artist Nancy Holt (1938-2014) was a master at it; at using her work to place the body, and wider humanity, in a global, cosmic context. Holt and the other land artists of her generation – people like Michael Heizer, Richard Long and her partner, Robert Smithson – wanted to break out of the restrictions of paint and canvas, stone and chisel, gallery and museum. Land, nature, the world itself, was the medium.
Goodwood is a fine setting for the biggest UK exhibition of her work to date – an expansive, lush estate in the middle of the rolling West Sussex countryside. There are two big sculptural installations placed around the grounds, Ventilation System and Hydra’s Head. In the first, a huge metallic mechanism pokes out of the vegetation around the main gallery; big tubular aluminium pipes, all interconnected, snaking their way around the place and back into the building.
