The Cutaway, Barangaroo
Lille Madden / Wanstead Reserve, Cooks River, Sydney, 2022
Uncle Charles “Chicka” Madden / Wanstead Reserve, Cooks River, Sydney, 2022
seedling grass (fescue, native, rye), clay, hessian; image imprinted through process of photosynthesis
Courtesy the artists
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from the Goethe-Institut Australia, the UK/Australia Season Patrons Board, the British Council and the Australian Government as part of the UK/Australia Season, and Rachel Verghis
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Lille Madden / Tar-Ra (Dawes Point), Gadigal land, Sydney 2022
seedling grass (fescue, native, rye), clay, hessian; image imprinted through process of photosynthesis
Courtesy the artists
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from the Goethe-Institut Australia and from the UK/Australia Season Patrons Board, the British Council and the Australian Government as part of the UK/Australia Season with assistance from Rachel Verghis
Uncle Charles ‘Chicka’ Madden / Tar-Ra (Dawes Point), Gadigal land, Sydney 2022
seedling grass (fescue, native, rye), clay, hessian; image imprinted through process of photosynthesis
Courtesy the artists
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous assistance from the UK/Australia Season Patrons Board, the British Council and the Australian Government as part of the UK/Australia Season with assistance from Rachel Verghis
In the photography of Ackroyd & Harvey, notions of passage of time and transience are evoked through the use of a living plant material – seedling grass. The artists use grass grown from seed on vertical surfaces as a living photographic medium, which they term ‘photographic photosynthesis’. In a darkroom setting using projected light through a negative image, the emergent blade of grass has an extraordinary capacity to record complex photographic images through the production of chlorophyll. In a sense, Ackroyd & Harvey have adapted the photographic art of producing pictures on a sensitive film to the light sensitivity of young grass and the equivalent tonal range developed in black and white photographic paper is created within the grass in shades of yellow and green. Each germinating blade of grass produces a concentration of chlorophyll pigment that relates to the amount of projected light available to it and the strength of green produced is according to the intensity of light received; the grass still grows without light, the bright yellow colour being conferred by light-independent pigments. To ensure the stability and visibility of the image during exhibition, the grass is dried. There may occur some gradual fading of the image over time due to natural UV bleaching by light.
Responding to ‘place’ is integral to how Ackroyd & Harvey develop ideas and their work is often created for the venue, considered within the context of the curatorial vision, the architecture of the space and the influence of the environment, both in terms of the immediacy of locale and the complexity of earth ecosystems.
For rīvus, the artists worked with Uncle Charles ‘Chicka’ Madden, a widely respected Gadigal Elder, and his grand-daughter Lille Madden, First Nations director at Groundswell and activist with SeedMob to make the photographic content. Statuesque and framed against a stormy sky, their figures are shown on a monumental scale at 5 metres high at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The photographs which form the basis for these works were taken under the Sydney Harbour Bridge at Tar-Ra (Dawes Point), a significant site in the history of Gadigal language.
