Holt and Smithson films in "Expanding Landscapes: Painting After Land Art" at Lakeland Arts in UK
Works by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson are on view in Expanding Landscapes: Painting After Land Art at Lakeland Arts Abbot Hall in Kirkland, Kendall, UK.
The exhibition features screenings of Nancy Holt's 1978 film Sun Tunnels and the 1971 collaborative film by Holt and Robert Smithson titled Swamp.
Swamp is a short 16mm film that explores the mechanics of seeing through site, core concerns of both Holt and Smithson. Looking through the viewfinder of a Bolex camera focused in tight close-up, Holt attempts to walk through the landscape—her field of vision through the camera too narrow for steady progress. Reflecting on Swamp some twenty years later, Holt noted that the film “deals with limitations of perception through the camera eye as Bob and I struggled through a muddy New Jersey swamp. Verbal direction cannot easily be followed. As the reeds crash against the camera lens blocking vision and forming continuously shifting patterns, confusion ensues.”Expanding Landscapes is curated by Rebecca Partridge and Joy Sleeman (one of our 2023 Research Fellows) in collaboration with Helen Stalker. The exhibition “traces the Romantic motifs of earth, sea, and sky through a range of materials and processes.”
The exhibition is on view through September 6, 2025. Learn more about the exhibition through Lakeland Arts.
Installation view: Expanding Landscapes: Painting After Land Art, Lakeland Arts Abbot Hall, Kirkland, Kendall, UK
Photograph: Johannes Pretorius
