Roger Ackling: Simple Gifts, Annely Juda Fine Art

We often hear about artists sticking to the same medium throughout their career, but it is far less common when an artist follows exactly the same method – particularly if that method was as involved and idiosyncratic as that employed by artist Roger Ackling.
Roger Ackling biography
For 35 years Ackling made sculptures by focusing the sun through a hand-held magnifying glass to draw onto pieces of found or discarded wood and scrap card, burning lines onto the surface to create intricate geometric patterns.
Ackling, who graduated from St Martin’s School of Art in the 1960s along with Land artists Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, came from a generation of artists that explored the possibility of taking art out of the studio.
Roger Ackling Annely Juda Fine Art
Changing the parameters of what sculpture could be, Ackling employed an intense and meditative process to his work. Each mark measured the existence of a ray of light from a source many millions of miles away, imbuing his works with a gravitas that contrasted with their small size and humble origins. The works you’ll find at Annely Juda Fine Art, London, were some of the artist’s last, making this contemporary art exhibition especially poignant.