Roger Ackling at Ingleby Gallery
April 1, 2012 by Philip Watts 
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Images
—01. Installation view.
—02. Voewood, sunlight on wood.
Words
I was introduced to both this exhibition and artist by friend of Inventory Christophe Docherty, who is one half of the excellent Lawson Books imprint out of Edinburgh. The work of Roger Ackling is both striking and simplistic, and for the last 35 years the artist has produced all of his work using the same method: focussing sunlight through a handheld magnifying glass to burn and mark discarded pieces of wood and scraps of card. As the gallery website puts it best: "The resulting works have a weight and strength and sombre stillness which belies their often small scale and everyday origins. They have the power to transform the environment that they inhabit: making quiet interventions that subtly alter the space around them. Ackling’s work urges a renewed awareness of the small, the silent, the marginal, the overlooked."
