It’s been a busy few months (and years!) at Norwich Castle to say the least. As work continues for the multi-million pound ‘Royal Palace Reborn’ project, it’s a delight to see their opened glass atrium, restaurant, and shop. If you haven’t already, make the time to go in for a spot of lunch, you’ll get quite excited by the thought of what’s to come from this teaser!
And while you’re there, be sure to visit their exhibition, ‘SUNLIGHT: Roger Ackling’. It’s the first major survey and the most significant exhibition of Roger Ackling’s wonderful work to date, pulling together over 50 years worth of wooden objects burned by focussed sunlight through a hand-held magnifying glass. We recently heard from Norwich Castle about this exhibition, including what to expect and more about Roger Ackling himself!
The exhibition is included in the cost of a general admission ticket – Buy yours here
SUNLIGHT: ROGER ACKLING
By Amanda Geitner
Rosy Gray came to me in the first weeks of 2020 with the suggestion of a Roger Ackling exhibition and I was thrilled to be involved. Ackling had lived in North Norfolk and there was a work of his in Norwich Castle’s collection (Holy Island, an exquisite small piece made from wood from the shoreline). I had worked with Roger Ackling on two major exhibitions in 1997 and again in 1999, so it felt like the perfect collaboration.
In February 2020 we went to see the artist’s widow, Sylvia Ackling – and much to our delight, she was equally enthusiastic. From the outset we resolved on a major exhibition for 2024, to mark 10 years since the artist’s death. I think it was in the car on our way back from Sylvia’s that Rosy and I first talked about a PhD. I had always wanted to do one, and suddenly it seemed that I had my subject.
Within weeks we were in lockdown. I talked to Simon Wilmoth at Norwich University of the Arts and resolved to apply for the PHD programme, which is run with University of the Arts London. In September 2020 I began the part-time PhD with the working title Roger Ackling: Work and Teaching 1969 – 2011.
Ackling’s work is compelling. Described as an ‘artist’s artist’, those who know his work are passionate about it. The combination of method and material, the use of light focused on only that which comes to hand, casts a distinctive spell. Much has been written about the power and beauty of Ackling’s objects, but we were interested in representing Ackling as an artist of national and international significance. Ackling made over 160 solo shows in his lifetime, exhibiting internationally and across the UK. His work was found and made outside but was always intended to be displayed inside. Ackling didn’t just make works, he made exhibitions and the evolving brilliance of these was something that we determined to reveal.
Roger Ackling Date unknown © Courtesy the Artist’s Estate / Roger Ackling Archive, Henry Moore Institute
For our source material, we worked in partnership with the Henry Moore Institute (HMI) in Leeds. Sylvia had given Ackling’s extensive archive to HMI and Leeds Museums and Galleries in 2018. From late 2021 to mid-2023 I made many visits to the archive, going through each and every one of what seemed like endless boxes and folders. In them I found documentation of each exhibition Roger had made and all the detailed evidence we needed to show how he had installed his work at different times in his career.
To show our thinking and to allow our audiences to get to know the artist better, we knew that we wanted to include some of this archive material in the final exhibition – and are very excited that the exhibition will show at HMI in spring 2025.
Roger Ackling Voewood 2011 – 2012 Sunlight on wood 14 parts 15.5 x 32 x 1.5cm overall © Estate of the Artist / Courtesy Annely Juda Fine Art, London
In 2023, Rosy and I ventured further north, to the marvellous Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney. Director Neil Firth and Curator Andrew Parkinson had worked with Roger on the exhibition Brought Back in 2009 and his work was represented in their collection. In fact, it had been a key inspiration to architects Reiach and Hall when the Pier Arts Centre was renovated and extended in 2007 – you could say that Ackling’s work is echoed in the very fabric of the building. In a smaller form, the exhibition will also show at the Pier in summer 2025. Roger would have been thrilled.
The exhibition has been four years in the making and is the result of the close collaboration of a team, including Rosy and me as lead curators, Ian Parker at Annely Juda Fine Art (who manages the Ackling estate), Sylvia Ackling and artists Carol Roberston and Trevor Sutton. Our small exhibition group worked together on the selection and exhibition methods.
That close working continued through the installation for which we were joined by the brilliant technical team at Norwich Castle. Painting the galleries a perfect white, they even painted the inside of the gallery doors – a small thing to note, but it was emblematic of how they understood Ackling’s work and the immaculate presentation that we were determined to achieve.
There was a particularly joyful moment in the installation of SUNLIGHT. Ian had come up to join us from London and Trevor and Carol were also in the space. Robert Filby was working with us as technician, and he had his own experience of Ackling’s work – Roger had tutored Robert at Norwich University of the Arts. We decided to tackle the installation Down to Earth, that is a large, multi-part ensemble that commands the end wall of the second gallery. We invited Ian to lead, working with Trevor and Robert. We looked at images of the installation in 2011 at Chelsea Art Space and at East Gallery, Norwich. We even had a preparatory sketch of the installation that Roger had made.
Finally, Ian said ‘Let’s put these aside and just make it.’ Roger would never have made exactly the same installation twice. He would have responded to the space and the work at hand (dealing in this case with the grand Victorian skirting boards at Norwich Castle). So we made the work together.
Installation view: SUNLIGHT: Roger Ackling, 2024, David Kirkham
There were other collaborative gestures and words. Sylvia joined us on the final day of installation. She helped us place Roger’s work bag and, most importantly, she placed the last three works that we hadn’t yet found a home for in the gallery. Sylvia put them low on a wall, as if starting a conversation with the environmental monitoring equipment above and to the right of them.
Last words fall to the artists who appear in the film on show in the exhibition. These interviews address the key strands of my PhD research – Ackling’s work, teaching and exhibitions – and seek to capture, in the artists’ own words, how these three activities informed each other. These artists testify to the way in which Ackling worked as a highly networked individual, making, showing and teaching with equal intensity.
Rosy and I spent days working with the interview footage I had amassed. The final film is an unexpected delight, each artist speaks from personal experience. Some are holding works by Ackling, providing wonderful examples of close, attentive looking. The film is 62 minutes long and can be dipped in and out of. But we suggest you take time to sit and enjoy: SUNLIGHT: Roger Ackling / East Anglia Art Fund
For us, it has been so rewarding to have been able to bring so much of Ackling’s work together – over 160 works alongside 100 items from the archive. It is an unprecedented exhibition of Ackling’s installation approaches and the most significant study of his work to date. SUNLIGHT and the study that made it possible were informed by a conviction that an experience of Ackling’s work in the real was essential to an understanding of it. People are coming to the exhibition because they already love Ackling’s work, but many are wandering in to discover an artist that is entirely new to them. It is thrilling to see the delight and fascination people are finding in Ackling work. And we can’t spend enough time in SUNLIGHT.
Bio
Amanda Geitner studied Art History and Literature at the University of Western Australia, Perth and began her career there, at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery. In 1995 she moved to the UK for the role of Assistant Curator at the Mead Gallery, University of Warwick, before moving to Norwich in 1998 to be the Chief Curator at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia. Amanda succeeded Charlotte Crawley as Director of EAAF in autumn 2015.
The exhibition is included in the cost of a general admission ticket – Buy yours here
