Visual
artists, Ackroyd and Harvey, have created their latest grass art installation,
a gravity-defying wall of living grass, in Aarhus, Denmark, as part of the ARoS
Aarhus Art Museum’s ‘The Present and The Future’ exhibition.
The
installation, Vestergade 7 – named after the street number and name of the
building block where it is located – features a vertical wall of living grass
grown from seedlings and is described as a dislocated fragment of nature on the
urban space: a gravity-defying artifact of the natural where the first
shoots of living blades point to the potential of place to be renewed.
Photo courtesy of Ackroyd & Harvey.
Vestergade 7 was produced using grass seed specially bred by
Germinal for drought tolerance and a striking green colour.
It is the latest installation from Heather Ackroyd and Dan
Harvey who are acclaimed for their monumental works covering entire facades
with grass. Their ‘perverse form of horticulture’ draws into question
what is reasonably required in town and city landscapes subjected to the vagaries
of a changing climate, and shows that it is possible to cover sheer inert city
walls with a blanket of green, living material.
As a
temporal landmark, the installation artwork presents a shifting canvas of life
which exposes the fragility of the plant to the elements: the seedling grass is
never cut, instead remaining the first tender, vulnerable and tactile shoot
which will eventually succumb to change and decay.
