Changing Landscapes

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

9 March – 28 July 2013


Beuys’ Acorns
In 2007, Ackroyd & Harvey collected and germinated hundreds of acorns from Joseph Beuys’s seminal artwork 7000 Oaks and to date have about 250 surviving saplings. In its first phase their artwork is a long-term research project aiming to generate discussion and reflection on scientific, political and creative economies and the cultural and environmental significance of trees.

Stranded 2006
In 2005, working closely with the Cetacean Stranding Programme at London’s Natural History Museum, Ackroyd & Harvey removed the skeleton of a minke whale washed up in Skegness, Lincolnshire, on the UK’s east coast. The artists cleaned the whale bones and then immersed them one by one in a highly saturated alum solution, encrusting the skeleton with a chemical growth of ice-like crystals. This is a work born out of the artists voyages to the High Arctic with Cape Farewell. A 17 min film documenting the artists removing the skeleton, cleaning and crystallizing it, accompanies the work.

Considering Landscapes
22 March 2013
10.30am –  4.30pm

6 June 2013
10.30am – 5.00pm
Considering Landscapes Study Day II – Programme info

Join artists Ackroyd & Harvey, Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change, UEA and John Burton, CEO World Land Trust, Tom Williamson, Director of UEA Landscape Group and Benedict Binns of Adapt, to discuss issues arising from Beuys’ Acorns.

More info