Roger Ackling: Work and Teaching

This PhD by curatorial practice focuses on the work of British artist Roger Ackling (1947–2014). Ackling’s career is notable for his artistic practice and his long and influential teaching career. The research aims to understand his career as an artist and teacher, and his work in relation to Land Art, Minimalist and Conceptual Art movements, and its impact on artists he worked with and taught.

Ackling made objects by burning wood or card, focusing sunlight through the lens of a hand-held magnifying glass to scorch repeated patterns of lines across the surface. Collecting materials from the margins, he is renowned for his work on driftwood but also used other materials of no or little value that were found or discarded. His primary tool was the light of the sun, transforming energy in a way that was fundamentally photographic and also akin to a cauterising of the surface. Within the parameters of this method, Ackling made work that is remarkable for both its consistency and its variety, the apparent simplicity of his process resulting in objects of great complexity.

This study examines the singular character of Ackling’s career, which involved a consistent commitment to making, exhibiting, and teaching through four decades. A fidelity to these three practices as an artist provides an opportunity, perhaps unique to Ackling, to reveal how his approach to making and his innovations in installation and exhibiting informed his teaching. A detailed examination of the artist’s Archive and extensive interviews with artists Ackling taught together provide insight into the intersection of these elements, how attitudes to making and exhibiting informed the way he engaged with students, and evidence of the influence of his work on artists working today.

The practice outcome of the research was the first survey exhibition of the artist’s work. SUNLIGHT: Roger Ackling showed at Norwich Castle from 18 May to 22 September 2024, at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, from 4 April to 22 June 2025, and at the Pier Arts Centre, Orkney, from 12 July to 1 November 2025.