A sweeping five-metre disc of River Avon mud now dominates the entrance to the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing, marking the institution’s 200th anniversary with earthy grandeur. Sir Richard Long’s Mud Sun (2025), unveiled today, sees Britain’s preeminent land artist return to the Gallery with his most architecturally ambitious work to date.
The raw, circular composition – hand-applied in tidal mud from near Long’s Bristol home – greets visitors ascending the grand staircase. Its swirling gestures and gravity-drawn rivulets form a striking counterpoint to the Renaissance masterpieces beyond. “It’s about different energies in conversation,” Long explains. “My hand’s movement, the water’s flow, and gravity’s pull all leave their mark.”
This monumental commission continues Long’s six-decade exploration of walking and mark-making that began with his seminal A Line Made by Walking in 1967. Where that early work left ephemeral traces in grass, Mud Sun transforms the National Gallery’s neoclassical interior into a site of primal creativity. The work’s positioning proves particularly resonant, bridging the Medieval and Renaissance galleries while echoing Bridget Riley’s Messengers at the building’s opposite end.
“Long distills artistic creation to its Neolithic essence,” notes Daniel F Herrmann, the Gallery’s Ardalan Curator of Modern and Contemporary Projects. “There’s profound continuity between this gesture and those of the Old Masters nearby.” The mud’s deep brown tones and textured surface create a visceral connection to the earth, even as its circular form nods to Renaissance ideals of perfect geometry.
The commission arrives as part of CC Land: The Wonder of Art, the Gallery’s most ambitious rehang in history. Director Sir Gabriele Finaldi describes Mud Sun as “richly allusive and powerfully gestural,” noting how it “speaks to the mysterious alchemy of art itself.” The work enters the Gallery’s Contextual Collection as a gift from Dr Didi Mei Yi Wong, supported by Lisson Gallery, following Long’s 2023 River Avon Mud Crescent created for the Saint Francis of Assisi exhibition.
Now 79, Long remains as committed to his elemental practice as when he first walked that Wiltshire field nearly sixty years ago. From winning the 1989 Turner Prize to representing Britain at the 1976 Venice Biennale, his career has consistently blurred boundaries between art and life. Recent exhibitions at the Rijksmuseum and M Leuven have introduced his work to new generations, while Mud Sun represents perhaps his most prominent public statement yet.
As visitors pause before this muddy cosmos before turning to Botticelli or Bellini, they’re reminded of art’s fundamental origins – the human impulse to leave marks, to transform matter, to commune with the elements. In an age of digital perfection, Long’s work grounds us in the physical world, its imperfect beauty speaking across centuries to the very heart of creativity.
Sir Richard Long has been a pioneer of conceptual art in Britain since he created A Line Made by Walking in 1967. For this ephemeral work, the artist left a trodden track in the grass, a fixed trace of movement and human presence that would soon disappear again. The work had considerable influence on the development of conceptual art, allowing time, space, and distance to become subjects in Long’s work and for walking to become his medium. Long expanded his walks to wilderness regions all over the world, including a walk in the Alps that was documented in his first text work for the seminal exhibition of Minimal and Conceptual works, entitled “When Attitude Becomes Form,” at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969. In the 1980s, Long began creating new types of mud works by applying handprints directly to the wall. He also became known for his large sculptures made from lines and circles of slate, driftwood, footprints, or stone, often found and arranged during his walks or sourced from quarries near exhibition sites. Long’s walks and ephemeral works are usually recorded through photographs and accompanied by maps and text works, where measurements of time and distance, place names, phenomena and encounters become vocabulary for both original ideas and powerful, condensed narratives.
Mud Sun remains on permanent display at the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing staircase from 10 May 2025, coinciding with the bicentennial rehang.