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Private View: Andy Goldsworthy

Richard Ingleby
Saturday 26 August 2000 00:00 BST
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A couple of months ago, Andy Goldsworthy's installation "Snowballs in Summer" brought a little bit of the Scottish winter to London in summer, with 13 one-tonne snowballs left to melt on the city streets. Their progress, or rather their decline, has been recorded in a video and a 14th ball is due out of refrigeration this week as the centrepiece of Time, a new exhibition at the Barbican.

A couple of months ago, Andy Goldsworthy's installation "Snowballs in Summer" brought a little bit of the Scottish winter to London in summer, with 13 one-tonne snowballs left to melt on the city streets. Their progress, or rather their decline, has been recorded in a video and a 14th ball is due out of refrigeration this week as the centrepiece of Time, a new exhibition at the Barbican.

The idea of time and flux has long been central to Goldsworthy's art: the success of his subtle, often magical, interventions of nature determined by the fact that they won't last (ice melts, sand shifts, leaves rot, etc) but in this latest body of work the idea is taken to another level. The snowballs are one self-explanatory theme, but another, more manipulative intervention is suggested by the video Torn Stones in which he has fired rocks in a specially made kiln until their outer skin tears and peels to reveal a molten core.

This is a tougher, almost more urban sort of show than we have seen in the past, but as always with Goldsworthy, it's well worth a look.

The Curve Gallery, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2 (0207-638 5403) to 29 Oct

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