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Above: Ash to Ash, installed at White Horse Country Park © Ackroyd & Harvey. Photograph © Manuel Vason

Top right: Beuys’ Acorns 2007 - ongoing © Ackroyd & Harvey

Bottom right: Beuys’ Acorns installed at The Lark Descending exhibition, St Martins Walk, Dorking 2018 © Ackroyd & Harvey work, and has driven them on to produce many award-winning and iconic ‘living’ pieces, including the striking History Trees, a series of 10 mature trees holding huge engraved rings at the entrances to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. Other memorable and thought-provoking commissions include largescale artworks built into the David Attenborough Building at Cambridge University. An open-ended project called Beuys’ Acorns began in 2007 when the artists germinated hundreds of acorns collected from influential German artist Joseph Beuys’ seminal artwork 7000 Oaks. The young trees will soon create centrepieces for much-needed conversations and interactions that Ackroyd & Harvey are planning at venues around the UK.

But it is their trademark grass seedling works that continue to intrigue them and that they return to time and again. “The opportunity to regrow the coats for an action at Fashion Week was irresistible,” they admit. They first showed the living artworks, which take

44 Resurgence & Ecologist

September/October 2019

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