TIME AND PROCESS: Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Film Works Screening and Discussion

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson were pioneering American artists whose work profoundly questions our relationship to the phenomena that we encounter in the land. Though site specific works, installations, writing, research, film and photography, Holt and Smithson charted an expansive visual, conceptual and environmental territory. Reflected in their video works is a strong sensibility for the element of time that may never be overlooked. Perhaps as a result of that overwhelming belief, another one emerges - that of an importance of documentation of the process that leads to creation of the work of art.

This screening event will present a selection of films by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson:

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty (1970); colour, sound, film on HD video; 35 minutes

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Swamp (1971); color, sound 16 mm film on HD video; duration 6 minutes

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels (1978) ; colour, sound, 16 mm film on HD video; duration 26 minutes 31 seconds

The screening will be followed by an open discussion with Lisa Le Feuvre, Executive Director of Holt/Smithson Foundation, chaired by Intermediate Unit 7.

NANCY HOLT (1938 – 2014) was a member of the earth, land, and conceptual art movements. A pioneer of site-specific installation and the moving image, Holt recalibrated the limits of art. She expanded the places where art could be found and embraced the new media of her time. Across five decades she asked questions about how we might understand our place in the world, investigating perception, systems, and place.

ROBERT SMITHSON (1938 - 1973) For over fifty years, Robert Smithson's work and ideas have influenced artists and thinkers, building the ground from which contemporary art has grown. Born in New Jersey in 1938, Smithson' early interests in cartography, geology, prehistory, philosophy, science-fiction, and language spiral through his work. From his landmark earthworks to his “quasi-minimalist” sculptures, Nonsites, writings, proposals, collages, drawings, and radical rethinking of landscape, Smithson's ideas are profoundly urgent for our times.

LISA LE FEUVRE is a curator, writer, editor and public speaker. In 2017 she was appointed the inaugural Executive Director of Holt/Smithson Foundation, an artist endowed foundation that aims to continue the creative and investigative legacies of the artists Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Between 2010 and 2017 Le Feuvre was Head of Sculpture Studies at the Henry Moore Institute.

Image:

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty [still] (1970)

16 mm film on video

Colour, sound

Duration: 35 minutes

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York