BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 7, 2001 - This fall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum presents a new series of works by British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey, who use grass as a photographic medium. Ackroyd and Harvey's "photographs" cast in grass are created through a photosynthetic print process. Only instead of black and white, the images are shades of green and yellow. Their exhibition, entitled Presence and organized by Gardner Museum Contemporary Curator Pieranna Cavalchini, is part of an ongoing Artist-in-Residence program that enables artists to study the Gardner's preeminent collection and visitors to experience the work of emerging talent and ideas. Presence will be on view October 31-January 1, 2002.

Canvases of grass will hang on the walls of the Gardner Museum's special exhibition gallery as the artists harness the process of photosynthesis, capturing chlorophyll to fix images in the growing grass. Over time, the images will begin to dry and take on sepia tones. "Our work echoes that of the early photographers," comments Ackroyd. "And like those early works, ours is a mix of art and science." Regarding the title of their exhibition at the Gardner, Presence, Ackroyd explains, "Presence suggests the fact or condition of being present, or a spiritual influence that is felt or conceived as present and, by its nature, presence may suggest absence."

Ackroyd and Harvey visited the Gardner Museum earlier this year to explore the Museum's galleries, archives and greenhouses for inspiration for this new body of work. They spent time with the Museum's conservators, observing the work of restoring and repairing paintings and objects in the collection, and were interested in the "attempts to stop or delay the process of change," according to Harvey. "It is difficult to summarize exactly how we feel about this extraordinary place. The Museum plays into the nature of our work as a fundamental collaborator. This gives the work a charge, an essence particular to this place and time."

The artists return to the Gardner in late September to prepare their installation. "Ackroyd and Harvey have a powerful ability to create visual metaphors about time and visibility," comments the Gardner's Cavalchini. "Their work is very cutting-edge and arouses all sorts of emotions about memory, loss and possession."

As part of the exhibition at the Gardner, the artists are planning to re-grow one of their most widely known works, Mother and Child, an image of Ackroyd and the artists' young daughter first exhibited in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Presence marks the first U.S. solo exhibition of Ackroyd and Harvey's work.

Also this fall in the U.S., the artists are participating in a group exhibition at Sotheby's New York that will feature contemporary artists from the U.K. In addition, the artists have a grass photograph work on view in the traveling Paradise Now exhibition currently at The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery. Previous installations by the artists include a floating field on a Swedish lake, a 16-foot-high grass goddess in Rome, and covering the exterior of an 18th century theatre in Zurich with grass.

Art meets science
Through their work with grass as a photographic medium, Ackroyd and Harvey are fostering a heightened collaboration among the artistic and scientific communities. The two have worked closely with leading scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER) in Wales. IGER has helped the artists develop their work through the application of a "stay-green" grass that extends the life of their grass canvases. "Our understanding of the molecular events of leaf death have been greatly enhanced through our relationship with scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research," says Ackroyd.