Roger Ackling

Like his friends and colleagues Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, Ackling belongs to the generation of artists who graduated from St Martins School of Art in the 1960’s with a sense of the possibility of taking art out of the studio…

THIS DRAWING IS NOT MADE WITH SUNLIGHT

Roger Ackling creates his intimate and beautiful wooden sculptures with the meticulous use of a magnifying glass. By projecting sunlight through the glass he burns lines of tiny dots onto the woodÕs surface to form geometric patterns. The wood that he uses is found on coastal walks – not only drift wood, but remnants of previous objects now obsolete, unidentifiable or broken – weathered by time and the elements and often including rusted nails, holes, stains or daubs of earlier paintwork. Ackling’s work poses questions about the relationship between nature and humanity and yet, up until now, they have been formed without the direct contact of the artist’s hand – their production is remote but their alteration by the artist gives them a specific and serene individuality. ..

Slideshow exhibition