Andy Goldsworthy

Fifty Years.

Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years has recently been on at the National Galleries of Scotland in the Royal Scottish Academy Gallery on the Mound in Edinburgh. Running from the 26th of July until the 2nd of November 2025, I managed to get some tickets to go and see it with my mum on the afternoon of Friday the 31st of October. The tickets have been in very high demand because of how popular the exhibition has been, and the gallery even extended their opening hours until 9pm on the last weekend due to the demand, so I was very glad that I was able to get us two tickets to go and see it before it closed.

The exhibition, Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years, celebrates the last 50 years of Goldsworthy’s career and is a single artwork that is in response to the space of the Royal Scottish Academy building, including the materials and character of the building’s makeup. The exhibition sprawled across all rooms of the gallery building, stretching into every conceivable space, and is the first exhibition that I have been to in this building that I can remember having such an imposition in the space and such a sheer amount of artworks in one place. There have of course been other exhibitions that have been close to this scale, such as David Bailey’s Stardust in 2015 and Grayson Perry’s Smash Hits in 2023, but I think, from memory, this is the first exhibition by a single artist that I have been to that occupied both the upper and lower rooms of the gallery.

The relationship and connection between humans and the working land is a recurring theme throughout all of Goldsworthy’s work from his 50-year career, and this was more than prevalent in this exhibition. As you climbed up the steps to the upper rooms of the gallery, to the start of the exhibition, you could feel the raw energy of nature and this sort of buzzing in the space around you.

The first room we entered when we reached the top of the stairs had the lights almost completely dimmed, and they could even have been switched off, so that the only source of light came from the skylight above. As we had tickets for the 15:15 slot, the light outside was already beginning to fade, casting a calm, still, dusky grey across the room which felt akin to a cave or catacombs. The work in this first room was aptly called Gravestones and featured stones that had been displaced by burials from 108 graveyards across Dumfries and Galloway, which the artist had collected alongside his youngest son, Joel. Of gathering the stones, Goldsworthy reflected:

“The gathering of stones has been a deeply moving and humbling reaffirmation of life, which has given me a different perspective on the land and our connection to it.”

Before knowing the title of the piece and the thought process behind it, the energy in the room had already left a strong impression on me. There was something in the atmosphere that felt still, calm and quiet, yet carried an underlying sense of movement or vibration that you couldn’t quite place or see. I’m also glad that we went at the time of day we did, when it was rather dark and cool in the room, as I feel it would have been a completely different experience had I gone at midday in the height of summer, when the light is at its strongest and the daylight hours seem to stretch on forever. In Room 7, Goldsworthy had displayed plans and sketches for a much larger Gravestones project, and this iteration served as the first test of how the idea might come together.

Following the first room, we then navigated into the Sculpture Court, which featured two works: Fence in the centre of the court, occupying the space between two of the central pillars, and the Sheep Paintings, one of which was hung on the wall at each end of the court. As with the first room, all of these works had an energy to them, but each felt very different and unique to itself, while still playing together in some way. With the two canvases that made up the Sheep Paintings, it almost felt as though the energy of the sheep that had been on the canvas before was still there, like a shadow of their presence. Not quite like a ghost, but something more tangible than that.

In the process of creating the Sheep Paintings, two canvases were nailed down in a field with a mineral block placed at the centre. The sheep then fed off the mineral block, bringing with them mud, faeces, urine and whatever else they might have picked up on their hooves. Goldsworthy noted that several canvases were made before achieving the two included in the exhibition, and that everything from the weather to the number of sheep had a dramatic impact on the outcome of the work.

In contrast to the frantic, feeding energy of the Sheep Paintings, Fence had a much more imposing feeling. Made up of old, bound barbed wire and rope to form a large barrier, this installation felt more standoffish, yet there was still a pull to reach out and touch it. While we weren’t allowed to, I was intrigued by how the rusty wire might feel under my hand - whether it would be cold, sharp or blunt. You could see remnants of old sheep’s wool caught on some of the protruding spikes, a quiet reminder of the life this wire has lived and the storms it has endured.

Moving from the Sculpture Court through the rest of the exhibition, I could have spent hours trying to absorb as much as possible from each work that Goldsworthy had included in the space and in response to it. The sheer volume of work, alongside the absolute demand and imposing nature of some of the pieces, was almost to the point of being overwhelming, but in the best possible way. There was a constant pull to slow down, to look again, and to remain with the work rather than move quickly through it.

I could easily sit and write an entire article, or more, about each of the artworks and installations that formed Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years if time allowed. Every piece left a strong impression, and there was so much to observe, appreciate and simply be in the presence of that my only real regret is not having visited sooner. I am certain that experiencing the exhibition more than once would have revealed different rhythms and relationships within the work, allowing more time to sit with individual pieces and fully appreciate the quiet complexity of what Goldsworthy built within the Royal Scottish Academy.