Landscape as conceptual art
Full title:
Landscape as conceptual art: retrieving values in John Latham's conceptualisation of 'Five Sisters' (1976) as monumental process sculptures
Duration: Launched
1 October 2006, duration: 6 months
Principle Investigator:
Mr C Richardson
Higher Education Institution:
Oxford Brookes University
Contact information: Tel:
++44 (0)1865 484981 or email: crichardson@brookes.ac.uk
Aims and Objectives
Mid-Lothian shale bings such as "Five Sisters" have contributed to hugely to the recent formation of new landscape features in the Scottish landscape and provide an example by which further sites of new energy production (oil fields, coal mines etc) may be exploited once their industrial value has become moribund and redundant. The proposed research's potential application and benefit is a reidentification of "Five Sisters" as a site of art, reaffirmed in its recognition by civic and governmental authority as a place of 'natural' wonder into which other artwork may come into being.
For more details please go to the project summary document 
Progress and Highlights
The central output is the validation of John Latham's original proposal and its recognition by the Scottish Development Agency (later Scottish Office) that the derelict shale bings known as ‘Five Sisters', and part of the shale bing complex, Latham termed ‘Niddrie' Woman, are artworks of the highest quality, comparable to the greatest land artworks of the 1960s-1980s.
