Ackroyd & Harvey

Heather Ackroyd & Dan Harvey are based in Surrey, England, and have collaborated internationally since 1990. Sculpture, photography, biology and ecology are some of the disciplines that intersect into their work, revealing an intrinsic bias towards process and event, often reflecting both architectural and scientific concerns. They have shown in diverse contexts across the UK, Europe and the United States, including the Sculptural Quadrennial, Riga (2004), Chicago Public Art Programme (2003), V&A Museum, London (2000-1), World Expo, Japan (2005), Big Chill Festival, UK (2007), and the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art, Seville (2007). They have been recipients of numerous awards including the Wellcome Sci-Art Award and the NESTA Pioneer Award for their work with the light sensitivity of seedling grass and its ability to record complex photographic images, and have received two Art For Architecture awards from the Royal Society of Arts for the EPA Building, William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford, with Llewelyn Davis Architects, and Hanley Cultural Quarter, Stoke-on-Trent, with Levitt Bernstein Associates. In 2007 they presented their largest installation to date on the exterior of London’s National Theatre, where they grew the landmark Lyttleton flytower with seedling grass. Since 2003 they have made a series of expeditions to the High Arctic with Cape Farewll, looking at the effects of climate change on the ecosystem, and have shown the resulting work, a six metre long skeleton of a minke whale encrusted with alum crystals, in group exhibitions at London’s Natural History Museum (2006), the Liverpool Biennial (2007), Fundacion Canal, Madrid (2008), and Miraikan, Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science & Innovation, Tokyo (2008).

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