Rebecca Ackroyd

Rebecca Ackroyd (b. 1987, Cheltenham) 

 

Ackroyd’s work toys with the discipline of sculpture, as processes are dissected to their bare bones in a diverse language of making that questions relationships between drawing, abstraction and figuration.

 

Larger than life sculptures of legs, crudely made from chicken wire and plaster bandage, confront the viewer with their stark rawness. With crotches at head height they exude an air of confidence, emulating catwalk stances.

 

The overtly feminine collides with an abstract architecture as a way of bouncing the viewer between places. It hints an interaction or performative encounter whilst exploring a confusion of narratives that encourages clashes to occur between the works.

 

Ackroyd excavates the remains of an object and reconstructing it into something new.  To create works that reflect a history and yet also exist between places, becoming simultaneously familiar and unknown.  Scale shifts to create figurative works that meander through spaces like air conditioning ducts with vents or chimneys that breath in the space, while small works reflect an architectural model for a make believe castle or a derelict tower block conjuring ideas of a damsel in distress and urban or social neglect.  She wants the work to be inhabited and also invite a more intimate experience, a reflection perhaps on the overwhelming shift between global and individual desire.  An individual framework within which to exist or build meaning.

 

Ackroyd graduated from the Royal Academy (2015)