Recycling material and harnessing the power of the sun, the artist Roger Ackling, who has died aged 66 from motor neurone disease, used natural resources to make work that was exhibited all over the world. He would focus the sun's rays with a magnifying glass to burn grids of precise black lines into the surface of long-lost or discarded fragments of wooden artefacts found on beaches and in other marginal places.
He used no expensive materials and, travelling light, could work anywhere in the world. It was important to him that he did not touch the object with an instrument, but used instead an energy source 93m miles away. Detritus was thus transformed into work of great power and beauty, with qualities akin to prehistoric art, which we find beautiful and compelling without knowing its meaning or purpose. For the last 40 years he worked outside and alone, the wood in his lap, the lens in his right hand, the sun over his right shoulder.
Continue reading...