Henry Moore Studios & Gardens reopens on 16 April with Encounters, a season of stories and events.

See & Do

Exhibition

SUNLIGHT: Roger Ackling

4 April – 22 June 2025

Sculpture Galleries

Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

Free Entry

Fourteen everyday wooden objects, including a plug, chip fork, lolly stick, and a peg, are arranged in a line on a wall. They have all been 'decorated' with different patterns of black lines, burnt by the sun using a magnifying glass.

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Free Entry

SUNLIGHT: Roger Ackling is the first survey and most comprehensive exhibition of the work of artist Roger Ackling (1947–2014), one of the most quietly influential artists of the late twentieth century.

For fifty years Ackling consistently made objects by burning wood – focusing sunlight through the lens of a hand-held magnifying glass to scorch repeated patterns of lines on the surface. Collecting driftwood from the beach at Weybourne near his home on the Norfolk coastline, as well as reclaimed broken and discarded materials, Ackling took little from the world to make his work and left nothing beyond a wisp of smoke in the air.

This exhibition reveals the breadth of Ackling’s practice, from his earliest experiments with a lens, to his final works. Ackling is best known for his work on found driftwood, which will be on display alongside lesser-known sculptures made using domestic wooden objects and tools, and those incorporating ready-made elements such as elastic bands and mapping pins. After his death, Roger Ackling’s archive was gifted to the Archive of Sculptors’ Papers, which is part of Leeds Museums and Galleries’ collection and housed at Henry Moore Institute. Photographs, sketches, notes and even the bag he took out with him when making work are on display in the exhibition, providing a full picture of the artist and his work.

SUNLIGHT: Roger Ackling is developed in partnership with the Artist’s Estate, Annely Juda Fine Art, Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery and the Pier Arts Centre. It was first on display at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery in 2024 and will travel to Pier Arts Centre, Orkney, opening on 12 July 2025.

An accompanying hardback publication includes contributions from Sylvia Ackling, Amanda Geitner, Rosy Gray, Dean Hughes, Louis Nixon and Ian Parker, alongside a wealth of illustrations of both works and archival material.

A white gallery space with a high ceiling, showing many of Roger Ackling's works.

Many of Roger Ackling's wooden works stacked neatly against a wall, including crates, and various tools: a spade, hoe, dustpan, hammer, and rake. They are all decorated with burned lines.

A wooden hammer resting on top of a wooden crate. Both have been striped with burned, horizontal lines, made using a magnifying glass and the sun.

A wooded crate, leaning against a white gallery wall. It has been marked with horizontal stripes, burned into the wood using a magnifying glass and the sun.

Wooden works by Roger Ackling hung in a white-walled gallery space.

Seven small wooden objects, arranged in a line on a shelf. They have all been 'decorated' with different patterns of black lines, burnt by the sun using a magnifying glass.

A wedge-shaped piece of wood with horizontal lines burned into it. There is a circle of negative space in the centre, where no lines have been burned.

A grey-and-yellow-painted piece of wood, with a white rectangle on top, on which are several white pins with rubber bands stretched between them.

A square piece of dark wood with white drawing pins. A black line connects the pins in a zig-zag fashion. It has been burned into the wood using a magnifying glass and the sun.

A white-walled gallery space, with frames mounted on the walls and display cases filled with tools, notes and photos.

Two planks of wood, joined together in a cross, with the silhouette of a hawk-like bird drawn on top in black marker pen.

A collection of wooden objects that have all been 'decorated' with different patterns of black lines, burnt by the sun.

Black and white photo of a man in a forest. He is holding a magnifying lens in one hand, pointed at a twig held in the other.

Watch

Interviews with artists who knew and were taught by Roger Ackling

In a series of interviews, Amanda Geitner (curator of SUNLIGHT) talks to students, artists and curators who had worked with or studied under Roger Ackling.

In their own words, these conversations record the nature of Ackling’s teaching. Taken together they help to paint a picture of the ongoing significance of Ackling’s work, the themes he returned to, and how he approached making exhibitions.