First commissioned for the Out Of Sight; Imaging/Imagining Science exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California following their Sci-Art Research Award. The exhibition presented a serious attempt to communicate facets of scientific inquiry, through visual imagery made both by biological researchers and by artists.
Mother and Child is developed from a photograph taken by Dan of Heather and Adele, their young daughter.
This work marks an important point in the development of Ackroyd and Harvey’s photographic process as it was the first time a grass photograph had been dried and then presented in exhibition independent of the presence of the artists.
Mother and Child has been re-grown in the stay-green seed and shown as part of the V&A’s Breathless! Photography and Time. (2000); Paradise Now: touring exhibition in the USA(2000-1); Cara a Cara, Cultergest, Lisbon,Portugal (2003); Je t’envisage: La Disparition du Portrait, Musee de l’Élysée, Lausanne(2004); and as part of their solo shows Presence, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, USA (2001), at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales (2002), Fotosintesi, Metronom, Barcelona (2004)
In January 2000 Mother and Child received the L’Oreal Art and Science of Colour Grand Prize.