Activating archaeological sites with contemporary art, NEON is proud to present Richard Long’s Athens Slate Line, positioned leading up to the shrine of Dionysos Eleuthereus on the South Slope of the Acropolis of Athens. The project is realised in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Sports as part of the initiative “All of Greece, One Culture”. Curated by NEON’s Director Elina Kountouri, the installation is shown to the public for the first time since its inception in 1984. It will also be Long’s first work to be shown in public out of lockdown.

Richard Long has for many decades been associated with the emergence of Land Art in Britain during the 1960s. Central to his practice is the action of walking. He has created sculpture and Land Art using lines all over the world, including the Sahara desert, Australia and Ireland.

This particular work, Athens Slate Line (1984), consists of individual pieces of slate assembled to form a line. Its linear shape acts as a path, reminiscent of the meditative nature of walking. The act of walking combines physical endurance with the principles of order, action and idea, proposing a new way of viewing the wider area of the site. A line has been at the core of Long’s practice. It first appeared in his seminal work A Line Made by Walking (1967), as a student at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London. He created this artwork by continually treading the same path in a grass field in Wiltshire.