On the question of whether art and politics can be productive bedfellows, artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey (the subjects of this baggy but wise documentary) show it’s all about the grassroots. Literally; among the works highlighted here are the grass coats that put Extinction Rebellion (XR) on the front pages during London fashion week in 2019, and the giant photosynthesised portraits in turf they have been making for 30 years.
Such indelible images are worth their weight in marketing gold to today’s green crusaders. But the ecological cause has long been integral to Ackroyd and Harvey’s art, down to its conception and fabrication; a fusion of art and science that harks back to the Enlightenment, when the intelligentsia dabbled in a bit of everything. Impaling diseased ash trunks with porcupine-like spines, or dissecting a beached minke whale carcass to crystallise its skeleton, their work has a naturalist’s field knowledge and rigour.
But even backed by this kind of fastidious practice, can culture realistically be expected to have tangible political impact? Once the furore from their involvement in the Culture Declares Emergency movement died down, as director Fiona Cunningham-Reid follows the artists into the XR circus, it seems that the answer gets lost, as it so often does with activism. Life takes over, as demonstrated by the film’s second half chronicling the Covid period and beyond. Though Ackroyd and Harvey continue to make commissions, their marriage and what one commentator calls their “personal symbiosis”, disintegrate.
While the film is a bit euphemistic about the nature of their rift, one squabble is illuminating: Ackroyd at one point laments the “degradation” of their installations, while Harvey views it as “transition”. They finally choose to go separate ways professionally, with Ackroyd wanting to return to her performance-art roots.
But perhaps this acceptance of slow, imperceptible change holds the key to their political significance. Positively shaping the long-term landscape, as the hippy revolution did before them, is just as important as dramatic breakthroughs. Like the acorns from Joseph Beuys’s 7,000 Oaks sculpture – which, thanks to Ackroyd and Harvey’s stewardship, end up as trees on the Tate Modern terrace – you never know what the seeds of culture will produce.