Anya Gallaccio - Art Practice

Art Practice

Much of her work uses organic materials, with fruit, vegetables and flowers all featuring in her work. Sometimes these materials undergo a change during the course their being exhibited. In Red on Green (1992), ten thousand rose heads placed on a bed of their stalks gradually withered as the exhibition went on. For Intensities and Surfaces (1996) Gallaccio left a thirty two ton block of ice with a salt core in the disused pump station at Wapping and allowed it to melt.

Other works by Gallaccio include Stroke (1993) in which benches in the gallery and cardboard panels attached to the walls were covered in chocolate and Because Nothing has Changed (2000), a bronze sculpture of a tree adorned with porcelain apples. Because I Could Not Stop (2002) is a similar bronze tree but with real apples which are left to rot.

In 2003, Gallaccio was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. One of her pieces for the show was preserve "beauty", 1991–2003, which was made from glass, fixings and 2,000 red gerberas.

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. 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.