No one made art quite like Roger Ackling. Part of the Saint Martin’s School of Art generation of sculptors who graduated in the late 1960s he, like fellow Saint Martin’s students Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, was committed to challenging what art could be. And, like Long and Fulton, he took his art way beyond the confines of the studio in his search for answers.
Unlike the land-based art of Fulton and Long, however, Ackling left barely a trace in nature. Directing the sun’s rays through a magnifying glass, he would simply burn lines on to the surface of wood. I say ‘simply’: actually, what’s overwhelmingly evident in the lines and geometric patterns that cover the objects in this show is a sense of bum-numbing repetition. Blessed with apparently endless reserves of patience and concentration, and a necessary streak of obsessiveness, Ackling would be outside for days at a time, transforming bits of driftwood and flotsam into ceremonial, burnished, ancient and ritualistic-looking objects. They’re serious and humorous, humble and heavenly at the same time, full of life and, pardon the pun, light, as well as zen-like calm.
Ackling died of motor neurone disease last year, and this exquisite show is full of the very last pieces he worked on. Most were given to him by friends. There’s a darning mushroom and a doorknob, a wooden spoon, small chopping boards, as well as stacks of small cubes. All are beautifully economical – unwanted material recycled with the aid of natural resources – and, in the end, just plain beautiful.
Martin Coomer