Big Botany

Spencer Museum, Kansas 2018

Conversations with the Plant World

Following an International Artists Residency at the Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas in January 2018, Ackroyd and Harvey returned to the museum in the spring to commence growing three works.

The two photographic photosynthesis works are part of the artists’ Protector series, where activists protecting land from fossil fuel exploitation are captured in chlorophyll through a unique photographic process. The medium is nature itself. Blades of seedling grass provide a highly light-sensitive surface that the artists project a negative onto, creating a complex image imprinted on a molecular level through the production of chlorophyll and photosynthesis.

Andi, active in the Standing Rock Dakota campaign, was photographed at the Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas in 2018.

Lottie, active in the campaign to stop oil drilling in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England, was photographed on Leith Hill, Surrey, in 2016.

The Satanic Formula (after Senanayake) was regrown and displayed in the main atrium space.

More info