Ackroyd & Harvey
2024
Archival digital print
150cm x 88cm
Artist Proof - Edition of 3
 
1:1 scale transcribed black & white print of a photographic photosynthesis portrait. In the photography of Ackroyd & Harvey notions of time and transience are evoked through the use of a nature-based living material - grass. In a pioneering method they have developed over thirty years, grass grown from seed in darkroom conditions has an extraordinary capacity to record complex photographic images through the production of chlorophyll. In the transcribed b/w print the blades of grass are rendered in grey tone strokes akin to graphite marks on paper. 
 
Ackroyd & Harvey’s portrait is of Paul Powlesland, co-founder of Lawyers for Nature, a collective of solicitors, barristers and advocates who have come together to work on behalf of nature.
 
Ackroyd & Harvey make interdisciplinary works that combine art, activism, biology, ecology and history, with reference to memory/time, nature/culture and political ecologies. Processes of growth and decay are integral to artworks that evolve through extended research interfacing their long-standing interest in local ecologies and anthropogenic climate change. Recent exhibitions include RA Summer Exhibition, London (2024, 2022); Hayward Gallery, London (2023); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, USA (2023); Somerset House, London (2022); 23RD Biennale of Sydney (2022); Tate Modern, London (2021). The artists have received many awards for their bio-chemical photographic work and in 2019 co-initiated Culture Declares Emergency.
 
www.ackroydandharvey.com