Richard Long creates new work 'Jackdaw Line' at Hestercombe Gardens

18 July 2020

Richard Long’s newly installed artwork Jackdaw Line is set in the Georgian Landscape Gardens of Hestercombe in Taunton, Somerset. The piece has been commissioned as part of Bampfylde 300 – a year of exhibitions and events celebrating the life and work of Hestercombe’s former owner and landscape designer, Coplestone Warre Bampfylde.

Jackdaw Line, made using local Morte Slate, snakes through the landscape below the Box Pond, and uses stone sourced from a quarry in the same valley. Of this new sculpture, Long says ‘I’m an opportunist, I was invited to make a work, not far from my home, in these beautiful gardens with a fantastic supply of stones, and the help of gardeners who turned their skilled hands to manning wheelbarrows.’ The meandering sculpture is a reminder for the artist of ‘River of Stones’, a work made at the eighteenth century Madhavendra Palace in Jaipur in 2018’.

Since the start of the pandemic, Long has continued to make work from his home in Bristol, including Spring Line (2020) and Daydreaming Line (2020) both made by the act of walking near his home. This new stone work is Long’s first since the easing of the lockdown.

For further information and to book tickets, visit Hestercombe's website.