Le duo d’artistes britanniques Ackroyd & Harvey a construit depuis les années 1980 une œuvre à la croisée des arts et des sciences, résolument engagée pour la protection de l’environnement. Très investis au-delà de leur art, ils ont participé à la création de l’organisation “Extinction Rebellion” et sont impliqués dans le mouvement “Culture Declares Emergency”. En 2012, ils avaient été sélectionnés par le comité olympique et le conseil britannique pour les arts pour créer une installation pour les Jeux olympiques de Londres. Leur pratique artistique joue de l’éphémère et de la longévité, et s’inscrit à la fois dans les lieux artistiques traditionnels - galeries, musées - mais aussi en dehors.

Ils étaient les invités de la Journée culturelle anglophone 2023, mais la journée qui n’a pas pu se tenir.

British art duo Ackroyd & Harvey interview by Valentin Locoge

Your signature pieces are the grass portraits. Can you explain how these work, how long they take to make, and what people’s responses have been over time ?
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[Heather Ackroyd] It is working with this wonderful - quasi-magical pigment - chlorophyll and going right back to the very first time that Dan and I worked together, in 1980, as part of a larger installation we left a ladder against a growing wall of grass, the grass was growing was vertically up the wall, so the blade kind of grew up a little bit. At one point, we removed the ladder, we could see this pale sort of yellow imprint where the grass had been denied directional light.

[Dan Harvey] It actually started as wondering whether it might be possible to do something photographically because the grass seemed to be so sensitive. We tried this experiment of projecting against a wall of grass and we were astounded by the quality of the image : the grass is so sensitive. If you put really strong light on it to see the image you lose it a bit like early photography somehow, so we had to experiment and find ways to fix the image, so over the years we’ve sorely perfected the whole process.

[Heather Ackroyd] To come back to the question of portraiture I think initially we were highly experimental, a lot of our experiments were taking place in the exhibition space, so we were kind of living artistic life on the edge, but we would sort of be inspired by objects or things in and around the environment we were working in.
I think we did our first portrait in 1985 when we were working in Italy. It was of a very elderly woman who for all of her life had worked in the fields. She was just a very strong character. We did a piece of work called “portrait of Onesta”, but there is something about the portraits in the grass, because the image is registering on a molecular level in the seedling grass, so in a way the images, the portraiture are very ghostly - they’re there, the presence is manifest of the person. It’s almost like bringing a person to life through this sort of vegetal biochemical by a chemistry that is happening on the molecular level. It is also about taking traditional subjects such as portraiture in the Fine Arts, landscape, and re-imagining them, re-creating them with this living grass in shades of bright yellow and bright green that in a way just really really really strikes us. It just seems to be more profound, and it really is very affecting for people to witness these sort of like living presences in front of them.

How do you work with science and scientists ? What are the advantages of art over science ? And the advantages of science over art ?
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[Heather Ackroyd] We don’t have to wear a lab coat…

[Dan Harvey] …Not all the time anyway ! I think a lot of our work is around questioning the environment that we’re living in, and obviously having an inquisitive view on that and scientists are questioning things all the time. So it’s really quite a fruitful environment to work in. I know for us some of the first instances of collaboration were about using a grass that kept its chlorophyll colour, the green colour, when it’s a nest, when it was dying. This was almost like a way that we could fix our images within the blades of the grass.

[Heather Ackroyd] We have repeated often the synthesis work. But alongside the photosynthesis work, we’ve also grown buildings, we’ve also explored crystals. We work very multi-disciplinary. Science is a strong point of inquiry within our practice, but not to the exclusion of history or geography or potentially even psychology.

Time is a key factor in your work, but with different aspects. Your grass work seems to be ephemeral, your works with trees have a much longer life-span. How are all these works a metaphor of the world we’re living in ?

[HA] To some extent our work is very time-based. Before Dan and I met each other, we were both working with living material in our practice. I come from a performance-based background. Performance that was often happening collaboratively, cooperatively working with other people, happening within theater spaces, in national and international venues.
I’m very interested in the performative aspect of the materials that we work with. The portraiture - the grass portraiture - can be quickly corrupted by excessive light, too much water, so we had to work closely with the scientists to understand how we stabilize those images and we can hold a piece now in exhibition for many many months in low non-directional lighting, which is very good. Also in terms of time-based pieces, we collected acorns from Joseph Beuys’ ‘1000 Oaks’ artwork in the city of Kassel. He planted his first tree in 1982 for the seventh Documenta. Our trees are now 15 years old, they fill us with joy. It’s just beautiful to see these trees grow year by year.

[DH] There’s something quite nice too about a piece of work being ephemeral. You’re not having to store them and think about the whole commercial side of it. There’s something very beautiful about a living piece that grows, transforms, changes and then eventually gets composted. We do have work that is far more permanent and things, but at times it’s quite nice to have that ephemerality built in.

What is Culture Declares Emergency ?
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[HA] It launched in April 2019. It was very much speared and stimulated by Extinction Rebellion. Dan and I were part of the very first gathering of Extinction Rebellion outside the Houses of Parliament, on parliament fields in October 2018, when we heard Greta Thunberg speak for the very first time - 500 of us. I think a month later we were all locking down seven bridges across the river Thames. It was extraordinary, it was one of those completely heightened ecstatic experience because there’s a frisson of fear, we got to locking down a bridge you know, and there’s a lot of police around. You’re just sort of thinking we don’t normally do this level of law breaking, but there were so many people that we knew and people we didn’t know, and we were saying how do we take this sense of climate and ecological emergency back into our communities and into our cultural communities. A group of 10 or 12 of us got together and one woman in particular was saying what about culture declaring a state of emergency, so it was born out of that.

[DH] I think we were very much aware that some of the bigger institutions and cultural centers couldn’t be seen to be supporting a civil disobedience movement like Extinction Rebellion, so with the color pallet and some of the imagery and everything is very much linked to Extinction Rebellion, it was a way that people could declare and not be stepping over that line into peaceful civil disobedience. In fact that’s worked very very well, we now have a lot people who have signed up to Culture Declares Emergency, like the Tate Modern. All different cultural institutions and individuals. It kickstarted groups like Music Declares Emergency, which is getting enormous too, so all those great energies and fields are now involved with where we need to go.

[HA] It’s a movement of movements and right at the core is the climate and ecological crisis. But we can also talk about emergence : what are the new stories that are emerging out of the crisis ? How do we start to envision scenarios and futures which we can move towards as soon as we can ? There is real destitution, there was destitution, but now it’s about poverty, it’s spreading, we’ve got multiple crises that are happening now and the adaptation starts to happen. Culture has a very strong voice within that, so we’re trying to keep a movement going through - Architects Declare Emergency, Music Declares Emergency.

Can you tell us about History Trees from the London 2012 Olympics. What was intended ? What does it look like today ?
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[DH] There was a commission for a group of artists to produce ten sculptures round all the entrances into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and we were short of shortlisted. There was a conversation Heather and I had, whatever the sculptures were they had to be visible from a distance, they had to have a very small footprint on the ground as such, and I think we were having conversations about how some sculptures when you first put them out there, maybe they look wonderful and new, but within a short period of time, they start to look aged, or slightly tired, or from a different period and then we thought what can there be that just actually improves with time and improves with age ? Then we researched into looking whether it was possible to buy really semi-mature trees, and have them transplanted and there are nurseries that deal with trees that maybe are thirty to fifty years old, then we looked into the budgets, and then I suppose the idea of the rings that hang around them - there were five in bronze and five in stainless steel - were etched with the history of the site. So the tree almost becomes like an acupuncture point into the soil and the ring is like a time capsule of words that relate to either the ecology of the site, the history of the site - the Museum of London did research, archeological research into the site before the olympic park was constructed, and then also the history the buildings and businesses that were compulsory purchased, so they’re like time capsules I suppose. The idea was as the trees get bigger and grow, the piece is improving all the time.

[HA] There have been losses and we’ve taken those very hard. We planted three trees in time for the 2012 London olympic games and then the other seven trees were planted between then and 2015, but this was and continues to be a very very active development site and people want to remove one tree and replant it. This tree will not survive because - they want to build. And yet again, this is the conflict that happens : nature loses out, again, and again. The priority is always given to the built environment, to the homes, to the residents, to the profit, over the right to life of this tree. This is a tree that has actually been fairing very well, it’s doing very well, and it’s a beautiful tree, it’s 40 years old and we’re now fighting - well, initially discussing - and after fighting, and finally probably campaigning and lobbying to stop this tree being removed. It is a bigger story, for example, how do we really dedicate and manage spaces ? How do we really have a relationship with the trees and the plants within the urban space that is ultimately one of symbiotic protection ? If we say we’ll plant a tree and then ten years later it’s cut, well don’t worry we’ll plant another five trees, it just doesn’t stack up, you know.

A full photo report with a video is available here

You mention in interviews cave paintings, first nation art, the work of aborigines in Australia, etc. and how to some extent, if I’m not mistaken, you feel closer to those forms of art than to what I’d call in a broad generalization, the traditions of western art. Is that so, and why ?

[HA] You look at early aboriginal art and you can rip apart that whole notion of abstract art, it was there, but outside of the canon of western art. We had a really extended conversation with Lille Madden and her grandfather Uncle Chicka Madden. He’s a widely respected Gadigal elder, so Gadigal land is the land that the majority of the biennale of Sydney was using spaces and places on. This was prior to Captain Cook and the British people arriving in the 1700s, there were around 29 different clans living in and around this very beautiful watery riverine landscape. What has happened over the last 250 years is shocking, really, on so many levels - the propaganda, the colonization, the oppression, the genocide as well.
Working with Lille, you know, she’s so remarkable, she’s almost transcendent, she speaks through love, she speaks through activity, through nature and plants and creatures. She also speaks very strongly saying that First Nations’ people, they have the knowledge of the country. This is a 60 to 80,000 year old culture, it’s the oldest culture known on our earth.
In that sense, they have real long-term knowledge and experience and understanding, and place themselves completely within the web of life, and not above. They’re not seeking to control and dominate.

You work all around the world, sometimes you may have to get funding from patrons or sponsors who have ties with fossil fuels companies (or who are the companies themselves). How do you deal with these conundrums ?

[HA] This is a good question. We talk about this extensively, we talk about this a lot. We are in the matrix, it is impossible, seriously…In Europe now, I’m committed to only going by train. So yes, we did a long-haul flight to Sydney for the biennale where probably between us we were committing 22 tons of carbon dioxide up into the atmosphere…

[DH] We could say we did look into every possibility if there was some way we could do the work and not actually have to physically be present. In the past we didn’t go to Marfa in Texas because we didn’t want to fly there. We did the piece of work ‘The Ecocide Trial’. I’ve been a lifelong vegetarian, not that that gives us any right to travel around the world and do things, but we need to live, we need to work, unless we just stop speaking and go live as hermits in the middle of the forest and naked in a cave. We’re part of a system that’s toxic…how do you make change ? How do you shift things ?

[HA] Yes, it’s privilege, we accept we have privilege, we could also argue that while we were over there, the two months of the biennale, we took every opportunity to enter into spaces and talk about decolonization, we took every opportunity to bring SeedMob and Groundswell and the work of Lille Madden and the work of Uncle Chickka to every possibility. And we did what we could do, in our own small way, to try and bring in people who would try and write a very sick listing sheet, you know, kick out…

Can you react to the following quote by Oscar Wilde : “All art is quite useless” ?

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[HA] [Laughs] It’s great, but his art has been far from useless, with all his witticism for example. We were having that discussion in 2005 when we were meeting scientists around the climate, saying ‘art’s great, but it can’t really affect change’. We were talking about how Joseph Beuys was one of the co-founders of the German Green Party and actually planted 7,000 trees into a city where there wasn’t so much greenery because it had been obliterated during the 2nd World War. He was talking about how ecology was as important as economy. It’s his legacy.
There is also the book by the brilliant French writer Jean Giono, L’homme qui plantait des arbres ; that little book has probably given rise to more informal planting worldwide than more people can actually credit, because it was beautiful and inspirational.
So I would say actually culture and art have a huge role to play and I don’t see it at all as being useless.

[DH] It’s a richness, isn’t it ? Having things of beauty, having music that’s beautiful, it’s so important for well-being. The fact that early men strove to record things, doing the cave paintings, it’s something ! I would die if I couldn’t play around with things and be creative. It keeps me sane anyway, it’s far from being useless.

[HA] For me, it’s not just about the beauty, look at dadaist art, you look at really provocative art, the war artists and poets, the way they could affect people’s understanding of what was happening was extraordinary. You can parallel History through the art that was being made in a broader sense.

[DH] I was just thinking about our collaboration with scientists at the IGER (Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research) in Wales. For them, seeing the subtlety of colors we were getting in our photosynthesis work started a whole side of research, which has developed into this huge multi-million pound research center where they’re using scanning techniques and things to actually scientifically get - innovatively - information about plants and things. Art became useful for the scientists, which is quite nice, because it’s often seen as the other way around !

Why must we remain creative in the face of climate change ?
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[DH] At the moment, the politics here are trying to pass through a law that’s going to make any demonstration illegal deemed a “nuisance”, so if it’s too loud ! It’s unbelievable, they’re trying to silence demonstrations. I think creative arts matter, visually when you see a lot of reporting about some of the Extinction Rebellion events, they have really honed and studied, whether it’s the woodblock graphics they use, the iconic pink boat which appeared in the middle of Oxford circus, bolted the road, it appeared again outside the Houses of Parliament. It’s a visual way of using that creativity, which I think is so important.

[HA] You can be creative with very very little, you can be creative with clay and mud, with bricks and stones, with wood and a whittle stick. You can also be creative with extraordinary resources like CGI and computers. It is a necessity, it’s that sense of playfulness. When you see collapse happen, then playfulness is vital…Looking at Ukraine when war hits in on that level, I think that the paralysis that happens, the fear that takes over is exceptionally scary. It’s not to say that children are not playing with their dolls, or that people aren’t still making art. It’s just that I think there’s something very contagious about creativity and playing and sharing and I think it can become very communal. It becomes shared experiences and this is health giving in every sense of the word. I strongly react against a dystopian world stripped bare of dance and music and life. What’s happening in Afghanistan with the rise of the Taliban is scary, and in other parts of the world as well where this force has come forward to completely slap down creativity, music, women…All the celebrations that we have, which are really important for complexity, for the fact not everybody feels and thinks the same way about diversity. Culture is a great way and creativity is a great way to shape and share.

Interview conducted by Valentin Locoge over Zoom, May 24th, 2022

Key words :

art, portrait, science, power, tradition, first nations, Culture Declares Emergency, western art, Ackroyd & Harvey, ecological art, British art, duo, commitment, biennale, Lille Madden, grass, creativity, playfulness, Olympic games, London 2012, climate change, Australia, rebellion, Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion.

Links with the curriculum :

• L’imaginaire (cycle 3)
• Rencontre avec d’autres cultures (cycle 4)
• Représentation de soi et rapport à autrui (2nde)
• La création et le rapport aux arts (2nde)
• Sauver la planète, penser les futurs possibles (2nde)
• Le passé dans le présent (2nde)
• Identité et échanges (cycle terminal)
• Art et pouvoir (cycle terminal)
• Innovations scientifiques et responsabilité (cycle terminal)
• Diversité et inclusion (cycle terminal)
• Territoire et mémoire (cycle terminal)

Key quotes :

“It is also about taking traditional subjects such as portraiture in the Fine Arts, landscape, and re-imagining them, re-creating them with this living grass in shades of bright yellow and bright green that in a way just really really really strikes us. It just seems to be more profound, and it really is very affecting for people to witness these sort of like living presences in front of them.”
(Heather Ackroyd)

“There’s something quite nice too about a piece of work being ephemeral. You’re not having to store them and think about the whole commercial side of it. There’s something very beautiful about a living piece that grows, transforms, changes and then eventually gets composted.” (Dan Harvey)

“I think we were very much aware that some of the bigger institutions and cultural centers couldn’t be seen to be supporting a civil disobedience movement like Extinction Rebellion, so with the color pallet and some of the imagery and everything is very much linked to Extinction Rebellion, it was a way that people could declare and not be stepping over that line into peaceful civil disobedience.” (Dan Harvey)

“So the tree almost becomes like an acupuncture point into the soil and the ring is like a time capsule of words that relate to either the ecology of the site, the history of the site - the Museum of London did research, archeological research into the site before the olympic park was constructed, and then also the history the buildings and businesses that were compulsory purchased, so they’re like time capsules I suppose. The idea was as the trees get bigger and grow, the piece is improving all the time.” (Dan Harvey)

“You look at early aboriginal art and you can rip apart that whole notion of abstract art, it was there, but outside of the canon of western art.” (Heather Ackroyd)

“You can be creative with very very little, you can be creative with clay and mud, with bricks and stones, with wood and a whittle stick. You can also be creative with extraordinary resources like CGI and computers. It is a necessity, it’s that sense of playfulness. When you see collapse happen, then playfulness is vital.” (Heather Ackroyd)

“It’s just that I think there’s something very contagious about creativity and playing and sharing and I think it can become very communal. It becomes shared experiences and this is health giving in every sense of the word. I strongly react against a dystopian world stripped bare of dance and music and life.” (Heather Ackroyd)

Links :

https://www.culturedeclares.org/
https://www.ackroydandharvey.com/