Nancy Holt at Wistman’s Wood, Dartmoor National Park, UK, 1969 Photograph: Robert Smithson
© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York
Holt/Smithson Foundation have announced representation of Nancy Holt by Parafin.
Nancy Holt (1938-2014) was a key member of the Earth, Land, and Conceptual art movements and a? pioneer of both site-specific installation and film and video work. Holt is best known for her iconic? ?work Sun Tunnels (1973-6) located in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, yet across her fifty-year career? her work embraced a multiplicity of media. From the mid-1960s onwards Holt created an extensive? body of work encompassing concrete poetry, audio installations, film and video, photography,? drawings, site-specific installations, artists’ books, and major public sculpture commissions throughout America and Europe. Holt’s key themes were perception, time, and space. Her work uses? the natural environment as both medium and subject, endeavouring to make her audience conscious? of their own looking and their place in the universe. Holt’s aesthetic and social interests converge in her public observatories, which reflect her determination to “connect people with the planet earth”? and to render the vast spaces of the cosmos at human scale. Through her work Nancy Holt? transforms how we perceive the landscape, with her characteristic framing devices creating a? unique aesthetic of perception.
Lisa Le Feuvre, inaugural Executive Director of Holt/Smithson Foundation, says:
“Nancy Holt was an artist who rethought the limits and possibilities of art. For five decades she asked difficult questions? about how we understand our place in the world. Her art continues to inspire artists and recalibrate? the possibilities of what art can be and where it can be found. Our role at Holt/Smithson Foundation? is to care for Nancy Holt’s creative legacies and we are delighted to be working with Parafin to?celebrate this incomparable artist’s ideas”.
The partnership between Holt/Smithson Foundation and Parafin marks the continuation of a longstanding?relationship. In 2012 Parafin Director Ben Tufnell curated the first exhibition of Holt’s?photoworks at Haunch of Venison in London. In 2015 Parafin presented the first exhibition to focus? on Holt’s important Locator works, a project initiated in collaboration with the artist.
Ben Tufnell, Director of Parafin, says:
“It is a huge honour for us to continue to explore and celebrate? Nancy Holt’s extraordinary achievements and her enduring legacy. When we initiated Parafin in 2013 Nancy was one of the first artists to commit to our programme and so we are very happy to continue to bring her work to new audiences.”
Holt’s work will be the focus of an ambitious forthcoming exhibition at Lismore Castle Arts in Ireland, ‘Light and? Language’, bringing her work in conversation with five artists working today who have a long interest in Holt’s works and ideas. Alongside works by A.K. Burns, Matthew? Day Jackson, Dennis McNulty, Charlotte Moth, and Katie Paterson, this exhibition presents Electrical? System, one of Holt’s little known expansive System Works from the early 1980s. Parafin will present a solo exhibition of Holt’s work in its future programme, spanning a room-sized installation, drawings, and? photoworks. In 2022 Holt will be the subject of a major retrospective at Bildmuseet, Sweden.
Holt/Smithson Foundation
Active since 2018, Holt/Smithson Foundation exists to continue the creative and investigative spirit? of the artists Nancy Holt (1938-2014) and Robert Smithson (1938-73). Holt and Smithson developed? innovative ways of exploring our relationship with the planet, expanding the limits of artistic? practice. Their Foundation engages in programmes developing the artists’ creative legacies, continuing? the transformation they brought to the world of art and ideas. Holt/Smithson Foundation works in partnership to produce exhibitions, publications, public programmes, and new research. www.holtsmithsonfoundation.org
About The Artist
Nancy Holt Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Nancy Holt (April 5, 1938 – February 8, 2014) grew up in New? Jersey and graduated from Tufts University, where she majored in biology. In 1963 she married?Robert Smithson (1938-1973). Holt is known for her earthworks, public sculpture and installation? work. Best known for her large-scale environmental works Sun Tunnels (1973–76, Great Basin Desert, Utah) and Dark Star Park (1970–84, Arlington County, Virginia) her public sculptures are permanently? installed in locations across Europe and North America. In 2018 Sun Tunnels was acquired by Dia Art? Foundation, with the support of Holt/Smithson Foundation.
In 2010-12 the retrospective exhibition ‘Nancy Holt: Sightlines’ travelled from Wallach Art Gallery,? Columbia University, New York to venues in Karlsruhe, Boston, Chicago, Santa Fe, and Salt Lake? City, accompanied by a monograph by Alena J Williams (University of California Press). Other? notable recent exhibitions include Dia Art Foundation, New York (2018); ‘Nancy Holt: Locators’, Parafin, London (2015); ‘Nancy Holt: Land Art’, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2013); ‘Nancy Holt: Selected Film and Photo Works’, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2013); and ‘Nancy Holt:? Photoworks’, Haunch of Venison, London (2012). Her work has been included in major survey? exhibitions including ‘Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974’ at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los? Angeles and Haus der Kunst, Munich (2012-13), and ‘Light Show’ at Hayward Gallery, London (2013).
In 2020 Holt’s work is the focus of an ambitious exhibition at Lismore Castle Arts in Ireland, ‘Light and? Language’, which brings her work in conversation with five artists working today who have a long interest in Holt’s ideas. Alongside sculpture, photography, film, and performance by A.K. Burns, Matthew Day Jackson, Dennis McNulty, Charlotte Moth, and Katie Paterson Light and Language presents Electrical System, one of Holt’s little-known expansive System Works from the early 1980s. In 2022 Holt is the subject of a major retrospective at Bildmuseet, Sweden.
