New installation at Rice Art Gallery takes on nature as a medium

New installation at Rice Art Gallery takes on nature as a medium

Photo courtesy of the Rice Art Gallery

Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey’s exhibit ”Supernatural” was commissioned in 2003 by the Chicago Cultural Center and displayed at the Sydney R. Yates in Chicago.

Using grass as a photographic medium, British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey will create a site-specific installation at the Rice University Art Gallery. On view Jan. 22-April 4, the installation mixes art and science and will be the artists’ premier exhibition in the southwestern United States. The opening reception Thursday, Jan. 22, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. is free and open to the public. It will feature a gallery talk by the artists at 6 p.m. Complimentary refreshments including soft drinks, wine and ale handcrafted by the brew master at Saint Arnold Brewing Company will be served.

The public also is invited to hear Ackroyd and Harvey discuss their work at noon Friday, Jan. 23. A complimentary light lunch will be provided to all participants. Contact the Rice Gallery at 713-348-6069 for more information.

Ackroyd and Harvey’s work embraces site-specific installation, photography, art, architecture and landscape design. During their month-long residency at the Rice Gallery, the artists will create a major new work.

Their medium is nature itself — thousands of grass blades provide a highly uniform, light-sensitive surface used to create a unique form of photography. Nurtured in carefully controlled light conditions, young grass has a remarkable capacity to produce complex images through the production of its green pigment, chlorophyll. A black-and-white photographic negative projected onto the grass becomes reflected in shades of yellow and green. In past projects, the images were derived from classical sources such as text from Dante’s ”Inferno,” mythological scenes or iconic portraiture.

”The images have a ghostly presence; they’re sort of there and not there and suggest somehow some possible state after death, which none of us know,” Ackroyd said.

The artists accidentally discovered the photosensitive quality of grass when a ladder leaning against a building they had covered with grass left its outline on the wall. They experimented with different shapes and then with photographic negatives, learning that even under proper conditions, the image stayed in the grass for three weeks.

Their interest in fixing the image for a longer period of time led to further investigation with a group of scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research in Aberystwyth, United Kingdom. The team crossbred rye grass with a trait that prevents the loss of chlorophyll once the grass is dry. This ”stay-green” grass allows the artists’ work to last for years. The partnership was beneficial to both art and science.

The closing date of Ackroyd and Harvey’s exhibition, originally Feb. 29, has been extended until April 4 to be on view during FotoFest, the 10th International Biennial of Photography and Photo-Related Art, which will take place in Houston March 12-April 12.

Ackroyd and Harvey have worked together since 1990, when they discovered they both used grass as an artistic medium. Ackroyd was born in 1959 in Yorkshire, England, and received a B.A. honors degree in visual arts and performance from Crewe and Alsager College of Art, Cheshire, England. Harvey was born in 1959 in Dorking, England, and received a B.A. honors degree in fine art from Cardiff College of Art, Cardiff, Wales, and a master’s degree in sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London.

Ackroyd, Harvey and their daughter Adele live in Dorking.