Ackroyd & Harvey

Biography:

Sculpture, photography, architecture, and biology are some of the disciplines that intersect in Ackroyd & Harvey’s work, revealing an intrinsic bias towards process and event and often reflecting urban political ecologies by highlighting the temporal nature of processes of growth and decay in sites of architectural interest as well as contemporary art galleries and museums worldwide.

They are acclaimed for large-scale architectural interventions and for their work making complex photographs utilizing the pigment chlorophyll; in 2003 they grew the entire vertical interior space of a disused church in South London, the following year contributed to European Space 9th Sculpture Quadrennial in Riga, Latvia and in 2007 realised their largest temporary living public artwork Fly Tower on the exterior of London’s National Theatre; they have received the NESTA Pioneer award, the Wellcome Sci-Art award and the L’Oreal Grand prize for Colour for their photosynthesis based photography and have exhibited this work worldwide including Void Gallery, Derry; SESC Mostra des Artes, Sao Paulo; Bios 4 Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art, Seville; Big Chill, Herefordshire (UK); Chicago Public Art Program (USA); Agitate SF Camerawork, San Francisco (USA); Traits of Life Exploratorium, San Francisco (USA); Photography and Time V&A Museum, London (UK); Je t’envisage Musee de l’Elysee, Lausanne (Switzerland); Paradise Now Exit Art, New York (USA); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (USA); Rice Gallery, Houston (USA).

In 2012 they were awarded the ‘artist-in-residence’ position at University College London’s Environment Institute. This year they have re-created a work for the Points of View exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, USA and shown their 17min Stranded DVD at the Capital Offense group exhibition, Beacon Arts, Los Angeles.

In 2011 they were awarded the prestigious Mapping the Park commission for London 2012, a series of individual sculptures entitled History Trees at ten of the major entrances into the Olympic Park. Three of the sculptures will be present for the Games with the remaining seven to be installed for the opening of the Queen Elizabeth II public park. During last year they also exhibited in Terre Vulnerabili at Hangar Bicocca in Milan, continued a Slow Art residency at the Eden Project, were commissioned to make a short film for the What of Earth series, and showed a series of their crystal artworks at the Royal Society summer exhibition.

In the summer of 2010 they created a new commission for Trasparenze Art for Renewable Energy, at MACRO Testaccio, Rome and M.A.D.R.E in Naples, Italy.

Since 2003, they have made a series of expeditions to the High Arctic with Cape Farewell, looking at the effects of climate change on the ecosystem and have shown the resulting work Stranded, a 6m long whale skeleton encrusted with crystals at London’s Natural History Museum, the Liverpool Biennial 2007, Fundacion Canal in Madrid and Japan’s Miraikan Museum.

In 2007 they embarked on a long term project growing trees germinated from acorns collected from Joseph Beuys’s seminal artwork 7000 Oaks. Currently they have 250 surviving saplings and the trees have been exhibited at Manchester’s Centre for the Urban Built Environment (CUBE) and in 2009/10 at London’s Royal Academy of Arts Earth: Art of a changing world exhibition.

In 2008 they opened Twist, a landmark artwork twenty metres tall on the approach to the city of Bristol. The slate tower has integrated solar and wind-generating capacity produces sufficient energy to light itself. Ackroyd & Harvey have previously been recipients of two Royal Society of Arts Art For Architecture awards.

Ackroyd & Harvey have given many lectures and presentations, notably at the Nobel Laureate Symposium on Creativity, Leadership and Climate Change at London’s Science Museum; Planet Under Pressure, Excel Centre, London; Art & Alchemy, Trinity College, Cambridge; WWEE Forum, Smiths College, Oxford; Royal Academy of Arts, London; London School of Economics, UK; the Royal Society, London; Royal Institute of British Architects, London; Tate Britain, London; Royal National Theatre, London; Manchester International Festival, UK; Oxford University; Courtauld Institute, London; Harvard University, USA; San Francisco Institute of Arts, USA; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, (USA).

Inspiration David Nash!!!

Visit David Nash at Kew - A Natural Gallery:

Open until Sunday 14 April 2013

David Nash, one of the UK’s most productive sculptors, is exhibiting his work at Kew Gardens. The exhibition includes sculptures, installations, drawings and film in place throughout the Gardens, glasshouses and exhibition spaces. From April to September 2012, Nash worked at Kew on a ‘wood quarry’, creating new pieces for the exhibition using trees from the Gardens that had come to the end of their natural life.These new works are on display in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, the Wood Quarry as well as a stunning piece in the Nash Conservatory.

Exhibition supported by Xstrata:

An evolving exhibition:

Come and see David Nash at Kew: A Natural Gallery, an evolving exhibition from a celebrated British artist.

In a career spanning 40 years, David Nash has carved sculptures from wood, many of them monumental in scale. After carving, some pieces are then partially burned to produce a charred surface. His main tools are a chainsaw and an axe to carve the wood, and then fire to char it. Through his work, Nash has gained a deep understanding of the properties of trees.

Nash’s sculpture invites you to reflect on your relationship with nature in the majestic surroundings of Kew Gardens.

David Nash was born at Esher, Surrey, and raised with his older brother Chris in Weybridge, Surrey where they both attended preparatory school. Nash spent all his childhood holidays in Ffestiniog, Wales.Nash helped clear and replant a nearby forest that his father owned, and also worked for the Commercial Forestry Group. Nash learned about wood of many kinds and learned he hated planting trees in rows.

Artistic career:

He attended Brighton College from 1959 to 1963, then Kingston College of Art from 1963 to 1967 and the Chelsea School of Art as a postgraduate from 1969 to 1970. Nash was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1999. In 2004, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire. A significant exhibition of his work is displayed in theYorkshire Sculpture Park for a period in 2010/11. Kew Gardens currently has a working exhibition, launched in June 2012. David Nash is working on site in a 'wood quarry', his first for 10 years, to create new works at Kew.

Artistic creations:

David Nash is known for works in wood and shaping living trees. His large wood sculptures are sometimes carved or partially burned to produce blackening. His main tools for these sculptures are a chainsaw and an axe to carve the wood and a blowtorch to char the wood.

Nash also makes land art, of which the best known is Wooden Boulder, begun in 1978. This work involves the journey of a large wooden sphere from a Welsh mountainside to the Atlantic Ocean. Wooden Boulder is a large wooden sphere carved by Nash in the North Wales landscape and left there to weather. Over the years, the boulder has slipped, rolled and sometime been pushed through the landscape following the course of streams and rivers until finally it was last seen in the estuary of the river Dwyryd. It was thought to have been washed out to sea but, after being missing for over five years, the boulder reappeared in June 2009[citation needed]. Indications are that it had been buried in sand in the estuary. The sculptor had no idea of its location, and enjoys the notion that wood which grew out of the land will finally return to it.

www.davidnash.co.uk

www.wikipedia.co.uk
www.kewgardens.co.uk/davidnash

What is Art?

Art is everywhere, and is everything. We live in a world where everything has been made, a painting is painted, as a building is built and a photograph is photographed. Though nature runs at its own accord it is still art, it creates forms and visually interesting views, it has an ending, and it has a beginning and leads on to new things, does this make art?

A visually exciting appearance, an ending, a beginning and a lead on to newer and better things?The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power

Creative activity resulting in the production of paintings, drawings, or sculpture.The various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance. The visual arts the art of photography are all kinds of art and are creativity in an art way.

Subjects of study primarily concerned with the processes and products of human creativity and social life, such as languages, literature, and history (as contrasted with scientific or technical subjects). A skill at doing a specified thing, typically one acquired through practice the art of conversation.

The products of human creativity; works of art collectively; "an art exhibition"; "a fine collection of art". The creation of beautiful or significant things; "art does not need to be innovative to be good"; "I was never any good at art"; "he said that architecture is the art of wasting space beautifully".  The art form is a superior skill that you can learn by study and practice and observation; "the art of conversation"; "it's quite an art".

Tom Hunter Biography!

Tom Hunter graduated from the London College of Printing with a BA First Class Honours 1994. Hunter took his MA at the Royal College of Art, London 1997. In 1998, Hunter won the John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award. In 2006 Hunter was the first artist to have a photography show at the National Gallery, London.

Hunter lives and works in Hackney, London. His work portrays and documents the communities and life he knows as neighbours and friends in East London. He has exhibited work both nationally and internationally, in solo and group shows and is also a Senior Research Fellow of the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

The most things in particular in which I like about Tom Hunter are that he is just like me he has come from east London and very street life and most all this is what you mainly see within his work, you see a lot of strong elements these are the street and objects on the streets to make a great picture. The lighting within his images are mainly natural lighting.

http://www.tomhunter.org/html/tld_07.htm

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article.../Biography-Sir-Tom-Hunter.html

www.studio-international.co.uk/photo/tom_hunter.asp

charlotte cotten the Photograph as contemporary art book.