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Anya Gallaccio (born 1963) (2026). 9780714878775, Phaidon Press. ISBN 9780714878775 is a Scottish artist, who creates site-specific, Minimalism Installation art and often works with organic matter (including chocolate, sugar, flowers and ice).
Her use of organic materials results in natural processes of transformation and decay, meaning that Gallaccio is unable to predict the result of her installations. Something which at the start of an exhibition may be pleasurable, such as the scent of flowers or chocolate, would inevitably become increasingly unpleasant over time. The timely and site-specific nature of her work makes it notoriously difficult to document. Her work therefore challenges the traditional notion that an art object or sculpture should essentially be a monument within a museum or gallery. Instead her work often lives through the memory of those that saw and experienced it – or the concept of the artwork itself.
In Red on Green (1992), her first solo showing at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, ten thousand rose heads placed on a bed of their stalks gradually withered as the exhibition went on.Smee, Sebastian. (May 2004). " A dying art". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 July 2013. For Intensities and Surfaces (1996) Gallaccio left a thirty-two ton block of ice with a salt core in the disused pumping station at Wapping and allowed it to melt.Mundy, Jennifer. (13 August 2012). " Lost Art: Anya Gallaccio". Tate Gallery. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
preserve 'beauty 1991–2003 was an artwork which Gallaccio produced as a nominee for the 2003 Turner Prize. The installation consisted of a wall of gerbera daisies pinned behind a single sheet of glass. Behind glass, the flowers recall Still life and Romanticism landscape paintings, as well as flower arranging and pressing.
Other works by Gallaccio include Stroke (1993) in which benches in the gallery and cardboard panels attached to the walls were covered in chocolate, "Two Hundred Kilos of Apples Tied to a Barren Apple Tree", Atelier Amden, Amden, Switzerland (1999) and Because Nothing has Changed (2000), a bronze sculpture of a tree adorned with porcelain apples.Schubert, Karsten. (1994). " Anya Gallaccio ". frieze. 15. Retrieved 1 July 2013.Williams, Eliza. (9 January 2008). " Anya Gallaccio ". frieze. Retrieved 1 July 2013. Because I Could Not Stop (2002) is a similar bronze tree but with real apples which are left to rot.
Red on Green was recreated ten years later for the exhibition Blast to Freeze: British Art in the 20th Century mounted by Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in 2002–2003 and for the 2004 British Council exhibition Turning Points: 20th Century British Sculpture.
In Stoke (2004), Gallaccio coated an old farm building at Edinburgh's Jupiter Artland with almost 90 pounds of 70 percent cocoa, confectioner-quality chocolate. The work invited visitors to lick, touch, and stroke the walls.
2005 saw the publication of Anya Gallaccio: Silver Seed by Ridinghouse, which accompanied the artist's exhibition commissioned by the Mount Stuart Trust for an installation at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, UK.
At Houghton Hall in Norfolk, the Marquess of Cholmondeley commissioned a folly to the east of the great house. "The Sybil Hedge" is an "artlandish" folly.McCarthy, Anna. "Focus on Jeffe Hein", Houghton Hall Education Newsletter , January 2009, p. 3. It is based on the signature of the marquis' grandmother, Sybil Sassoon. Gallaccio has created a sarcophagus-like marble structure which is sited at the end of a path; and nearby is a copper-beech hedge which is planted in lines mirroring Sybil's signature.Donald, Caroline. "The new garden at Houghton Hall, King’s Lynn, Norfolk," The Times (London). 11 May 2008.
Commissioned for The Whitworth Art Gallery, Untitled (2016), dubbed the ‘ghost tree’, investigates themes of life, death and nature. Inspired by the removal of a decaying tree, Gallaccio worked from digital scans of the removed tree, later reproducing in ribbons of complex stainless steel plates, a monumental and reflective 'ghost tree'. It has become "a haunting response to loss and a timeless monument to nature."
In a 2018 interview with Ocula, Gallaccio remarked of the YBA breakout exhibition Freeze: "It feels just as precarious now as it did then. And I think it is good to constantly remind myself of that and not to get complacent. The bravado and the chutzpah of Freeze was impressive; it was more about a kind of attitude and that is something that has had reverberations."
In 2003, Gallaccio was shortlisted for the Turner Prize alongside Grayson Perry, Jake and Dinos Chapman and Willie Doherty. One of her pieces for the show was preserve "beauty", 1991–2003, which was made from glass, fixings and 2,000 red .
Awards and acknowledgements
In 2006, she was listed on the Pink Power list of 100 most influential gay and lesbian people of 2006. The Independent, (2 July 2006), Gay Power: The pink list. Retrieved 25 June 2007.
Exhibitions
Further reading
External links
Categories: 1963 Births, Living People, 20th-century Scottish Women Artists, 21st-century Scottish Women Artists, 20th-century Scottish Lgbtq People, 21st-century Scottish Lgbtq People, Alumni Of Goldsmiths, University Of London, Alumni Of Kingston University, Artists From Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scottish Contemporary Artists, Scottish Lesbian Artists, Scottish People Of Italian Descent, Young British Artists
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