Reason to Believe

• Main Author: Ackling, Roger
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Fine Art; Sculpture; Painting; Crawford; Fulton; Inverleith; Iceland
• Online Access: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/813/

I was invited by the Crawford Art Centre, St Andrews, Scotland to make a one person exhibition of my 2D work. (Sunlight on card) dating from 1982-2004, plus a series of small related sculptures. The centre is an important showing space in Scotland and along with Inverleith House (The old Museum of Modern Art) where I also made a solo exhibition, one of the largest public spaces dealing with contemporary art in Scotland. My show was the fourth in a series which in part was curated by Professor John Haldane, Head of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews University; dealing with post war ‘British Land Art’. The other artists selected in the series were D. Tremlett, H. Fulton and R.Long. This was the first time I had compiled a large selection (over 100 works) of work made mainly on recycled or thrown away card. The work was made in several countries; Japan, USA, Iceland, Switzerland, France, Ireland, Outer Hebrides, Kenya and England. Much of the works were unit based (see catalogue ‘ a quality of light’, Tate St Ives) and had strong geometric structures. These grids, circle, lines, were all constructed as a vehicle to hold time, through utilising sun light focused with a hand held lens. Several formats from 1996 onwards were devised as ‘mental nets’ to capture ‘something else’, which I regarded as ‘of spirit’, ‘of soul’. It is this ‘something else’ that has intrigued and advanced my artistic practice; the poetry of Paul Celan and his dialogue with Heidegger; ‘An Unresolved Conversation 1951-1970’ by J.K.Lyon, is a revealing insight into language systems (‘Language, primordial speaking through one’). My work questions through my experience gained by the process of utilising my technical and mental stance, ‘the angle of inclination’ that is needed to be grounded spiritually in the present.