A Line Made by Kneeling

Chak-pur, sand, 2021

In this performative piece, the artist uses a chak-pur—a metal funnel tool used by monks to create sand Mandalas—to create his own version of Turner Prize winner Richard Long’s A Line Made by Walking.

Richard Long created his formative piece A Line Made by Walking (1967) by pacing back and forth in a straight line in a field of grass. When viewing the documentary photograph of this prosaic action, the viewer is struck by the human (read: animal) scale of Long’s intervention in the landscape. The work is a quiet proclamation of presence, as well as a reminder of the personal journeys we’re all on.

“Like Odysseus setting out for home from Troy after the Trojan war, we are all changed by the journeys we undertake, be they physical or emotional. Odysseus’ journey is a metaphor for the human capacity to endure the unknown. To live by trust and inner strength. It stands for the universal journey that we all take, great or small, from birth to death.” - Sue Hubbard

The ancient Tibetan Buddhist tradition of the sand Mandala sees monks work for weeks to compose an intricate design using coloured sand. The finished piece is then destroyed in a closing ceremony and the sand later poured into the closest river, so that its healing powers will flow to the ocean and the whole world.

Mandalas not only demonstrate the persistent and incremental progress necessary to produce something of substance, but arrestingly evidence the impermanence of all things. Staincliffe uses the chak-pur to reflect on the past ten years he has spent living in China, as well as the ephemeral nature of existence.