M - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Ackroyd & Harvey
Mother and Child, 1.8m x 1.2m (Comparative studies) � Dan Harvey and Heather Ackroyd
woman we were to photograph at the active Salvation
Army meeting house around the corner. We
approached her directly and she agreed to be
photographed.
In 2001 we worked on our first solo exhibition
in London at the Beaconsfield Gallery, yards away from
London’s famous Lambeth Walk. We wanted to capture
everyday people, strangers to us, crossing over a
pedestrian crossing. In a way we were deliberately
stripping the content down to something apparently
mundane, walking from one side of the road to the
other, but presented in the gallery these full-size portraits
were elevated to 18 ft high. Seven huge panels were
staggered through the space, of people caught in the act
of passing from one side to the other. The piece was
called Afterlife – The Lambeth Walk.
Also in 2007, we presented a new work in an
exterior location for Big Chill at Eastnor Castle. Four
portraits of individuals we initially photographed passing
by the Big Chill bar just off Brick Lane were developed in
the grass medium and then exhibited in festival field,
exposed to sunlight, the elements and thousands of
curious people. The ‘look and do not touch’ ethos of the
66
art gallery was eschewed in favour of a very hands-on
approach. The image was literally touched to a point of
near erasure.
For our exhibition Here and There (2008) we
photographed individuals now living in London, who
were originally from Sao Paolo. Time is embedded in the
medium and the gradual disappearance of the image as
the grass died was resonant with the inevitability of time
passing and absence.
It seems to me that your work has a great deal
in common with Ana Mendieta’s Silueta series in
its exploration of site and the relationship
between light, growth and the conceptualisation
of time. What do you believe are the significant
differences between the transience which is so
central to your practice and that embodied in the
work by Mendieta?
We have never seen her work in exhibition, and would
probably need to study more about her approach and
work to give a good critical answer here. In terms of
transience, the colour green is volatile, both in nature