When in doubt my impulse is to return to still life, that small world I can construct and control. I create small sets and I have a limited cast of ‘players’. The objects in this body of work are mostly every day domestic things; measuring jugs, bowls and glass jars. The stripes appear to settle and calibrate the composition. Pattern provides a way of organising space and when seen through glass and reflected in metal, the ‘background’ is animated and integrated with the foreground’s ‘subject’.
The more closely I examine my little sets the more I am rewarded with unexpected reflections and distortions. Strange self portraits appear, the world outside is sometimes upside down. It feels like an apt subject for life in these strange times. Margaret Ackland 2021
Margaret Ackland has been a finalist in the Salon Des Refuse (2020), the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award (2019), the Gallipoli Prize (2014), the Blake Prize (2012, 2008, 2007) and the Portia Geach Portrait Prize (2004). Her work has been featured in Italian Vogue and on ABC TV's Compass Series. In 2012 she was included in Not the Way Home: 13 Artists Paint the Desert, a group expedition organised by Artist Profile Magazine and exhibited at the National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney. In 2016 Ackland held a major regional solo exhibition of The Watercolour News at the Gippsland Art Gallery in Sale. Most recently Ackland was commissioned to create a major work for the new Inter Continental Hotel in Bangladesh, the country's first major international hotel. Ackland's work is represented in a range of national collections including Artbank, the Holmes a Court Collection and Deakin University.
