ROGER ACKLING
Roger Ackling finds pieces of wood at the sea’s edge. He works on these found objects in a very extraordinary manner .By means of a magnifying glass he focuses the sun’s light, searing into the timber small dots, which slowly join together to form lines, which build into and become integral to the found object.Effectively he is drawing with light.
His exquisite pieces are created at the mercy of the elements, harnessing the most primal creative force, the sun’s energy.
He imprints real time upon something that already has a history and has been modelled by the elements.
Roger has works in major private and public collections and frequently exhibits at major Galleries throughout the world. Roger Ackling talks to Little bird. Norfolk 19.01.07 What is your understanding of a motif? I think in a away my perception of motif is that it would be some kind of identifiable maybe concentrated image of some sort. Which perhaps, even though it was condensed would hold , even in repetition something which was essential ,either in spirit or intention.
Mentally or visually it would be a container for what one could place within it. I would think that it’s holder of meaning very simple ,but actually loaded with complexity and emotional intent.
It wouldn’t be something which was a simplification, because of a lack of intention or a lack of ideas. It would be a simplification because a degree of intensity is brought to bear. So it could be the result of something that you had worked and reworked in order to refine.
Yes absolutely.
Initially, naively, I thought of it as being a singular image but I think it’s something about a singular image which allows that“condensement” to be expanded out and that can be to do with the size of the image and also that has something to do with repetition .The motif is the “condensement” of a very very complex mental and emotional format, which is then released into the world ,very simple but absolutely loaded. Would you say there are elements in your work that could be perceived as a motif? I’ve got a dot, which is an image of the sun. That is the motif and I can expand it out. A dot and a dot builds into a line. But because I have been doing dots for so many years and lines, its now not about the dot and the line ,but where you start and where you stop . Can we talk about the Diamond shape that is present in some of your pieces .How did you arrive at that shape and does it have any significance? It starts with one dot ,then two dots and three dots and it gets to a point when the expansions stops you start descending .In a way its like the sun rising and then setting. That’s not really why I do it. I don’t need to have symbolism to dignify or give something presence .I’m not a symbolic artist, its what it is at the time of making it. I could romanticise it and extend it into the idea, (though that might be a compromise) to say that it was representative of a day ,sometimes when you think about things too much, you start to remove yourself from them. So this diamond shape is something in the last three or four years that I’ve been particularly interested in. How do you know how much time you need to make each dot. There are factors involved. There’s the time of day, cloud condition, time of the year ,altitude and position on the earths surface. That then is related to what you’re burning. So ,dry, wet, there are a number of combinations on different woods , they burn at different rates. Some dry woods burn so quickly that in fact they go up in flames. So you actually have to work quite early in the morning or late in the afternoon and work when the sun is not so strong. Something I’m quite interested in with my own work is creating pieces that don’t have the artists handprint. Working in a way that is out of one’s control. When did you first work in this way? Strangely enough at St.Martins in the sixties, They set up one of the first film schools, no one really wanted to do it, but 3 or 4 of us did. One of the interesting things about film was that you have this thing in your hand which is purring away and you end up with something that is projected some feet away from you. I realized something very simplistic seeing all the fag smoke going up between the projection box and the screen, there was this thing about space, as you were saying ,it was ”hands off”. I didn’t really think about it intellectually, but it registered and then my sister gave me a magnifying glass and I started to burn things as I had done as a kid. I’ve always felt that “hands off” is a practice of allowance and everything is occupied, if you step back something else occurs. It’s like physics or chemistry really, you set up the procedure, an experiment and then things happen. You have limited control. What you end up with you can choose to accept or reject.
I think if you are a fisherman and you make nets, you cast them out and see what you catch. Depending on the size of the grid some things will go through and others won’t. A final word about colour. There is not a great deal of colour in your work apart from the natural colour of the material . What do you feel about using colour? You could say in a way that I’m working with light. I’m not interested in using colour its more about light and dark. In fact with lots of wood that I pick up I would probably not pick up wood that had paint on it. But then I started to, as a mischievous element, really to say that I was burning a painting………….
