Roger Ackling:1990-2011
24.11 – 21.01.2026
Current
Hours
Monday to Wednesday, 10:00am – 3:00pm
Gallery
Huxley-Parlour, Wiltshire
Mildenhall
Marlborough
SN8 2LW
Roger Ackling. Voewood (2009), Sunlight on wood with nail
Huxley-Parlour are delighted to announce an exhibition of British artist Roger Ackling (1947-2014), bringing together eighteen works to survey two decades of practice. The presentation offers a focused encounter with objects made in the last decades of the artist’s life, from the 1990s until 2011, and reveals an uncompromising engagement with light, time, and landscape that remains singular within post-war British sculpture.
Over a career spanning more than forty years Ackling pursued a radical clarity of method. Using driftwood and a small handheld magnifying glass, he channelled sunlight to inscribe scorched lines onto wood and board. These deliberate acts of burning – slow, patient, devotional – revealed a process at once sculptural and photographic. Each mark emerged through the direct convergence of sun and material, creating intricate linear and geometric rhythms that registered the conditions of their making. The thickness and tone of these lines shifted with season, climate and latitude: a system of traces that map the intimacies of location.
A contemporary of Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, with whom he studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art in the late 1960s, Ackling contributed to a broader movement that reimagined the locations and processes of sculpture. He worked outside the closed sphere of the studio, permitting the environment to serve as collaborator. Rather than imposing gesture, he sought to relinquish authorial control; sunlight, rather than the artist’s hand, activates and enlivens the surface. Driftwood, shaped by wind and water, provided a natural structure on which the artist inscribed these solar marks, resulting in works that are both intimate and enduring.
The Exhibition
5
The Works
18
Roger Ackling
France, 1995
1995
Sunlight on wood with nails
Roger Ackling
Outer Hebrides, July 1994
1994
Sunlight on wood
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2005
2005
Sunlight on wood
Roger Ackling
Voewood, unknown
Unknown
Sunlight on wood with metal
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2008
2008
Sunlight on wood
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2008
2008
Sunlight on wood with nails (9 parts)
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2008
2008
Sunlight on wood
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2009
2009
Sunlight on wood with nail
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2010
2010
Sunlight on wood with metal
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2011
2011
Sunlight on wood
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2011
2011
Sunlight on wood
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 1999
1999
Sunlight on wood
Roger Ackling
Voewood/Hebrides, 2007
2007
Sunlight on wood with nails
Roger Ackling
Orkney, 1990
1990
Sunlight on wood
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2010
2010
Sunlight on wood
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2005
2005
Sunlight on wood with nail
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2006
2006
Sunlight on wood with pebbles
Roger Ackling
Voewood, 2006
2006
Sunlight on wood (11 parts and base)
B. BRITISH1947-2014
Biography
Roger Ackling created sculptures using a ritualistic and repetitive process that remained constant across his 40 year career. Using a small, handheld magnifying glass to focus sunlight onto discarded scraps of wood or card, he seared freehand lines across the surfaces to create quiet and contemplative interventions. His process took place entirely outside, often at the site where the wood was found, with Ackling’s sculptures acting as records of this specific moment in time and place.
Ackling was born in Isleworth, London in 1947. He studied at St Martin’s School of Art, graduating in the 1960s alongside artists like Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, who together looked to move their artistic practices outside of the studio. Ackling taught for many years at Chelsea College of Art, London. Ackling’s works have been exhibited extensively worldwide including major solo exhibitions throughout Europe, USA, Australia and Japan and in group shows at Tate Britain and Tate Modern; Serpentine Gallery; Kettles Yard; Stedelijk Museum; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tokyo, amongst others. His work is part of many major public collections, including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the British Museum, London, Tate, London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He lived and worked in Norfolk. Ackling died in 2014, aged 67.