a gallery with a projection of a film on the right and a small framed work on the wall on the left

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

Archived News

a sunset at spiral jetty on the great salt lake paired with a view of an earthwork at a sand quarry

From Dawn till Dusk 2025

We are proud to partner with Land Art Lives, in collaboration with Land Art Contemporary, Land Arts of the American West, to present the second edition of a special livestream conversation between two iconic earthworks by Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty (1970) and Broken Circle/Spiral Hill (1971). 

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Chapter Eight of Tuesday Texts

We are happy to announce that throughout August we are publishing the eighth chapter of our Tuesday Text Series as part of our ongoing Scholarly Text Program, which invites thinkers to focus on a single artwork by Holt and/or Smithson. 

Every Tuesday will be publishing a new essay or selecting an essay first published in 2019 on our website, which all include images selected by the author, a short bibliography, citation reference, and endnotes pointing to the author’s references.

black and white image of a young woman on the left looking at a young man on the right.

Thursday Thoughts: Series One

In May of 2025 we shared our first series of Thursday Thoughts—a weekly series publishing interviews with Robert Smithson or Nancy Holt to our website. Interviews with Holt and Smithson provide a distinct vantage into their artistic process and the evolution of their thoughts throughout time.