Anya Gallaccio (born 1963) is a Scottish artist, who often works with organic matter. She was a nominee in the 2003 Turner Prize.
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Anya Gallaccio was born in Paisley, Scotland to TV producer George Gallaccio and actress Maureen Morris, and studied at Kingston Polytechnic and Goldsmiths College. In 1988—the year she graduated from Goldsmiths—she exhibited in the Damien Hirst-curated Freeze exhibition, and in 1990 the Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas organized East Country Yard shows, which brought together many of the Young British Artists. Gallaccio is a Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).[1] Gallaccio has exhibited extensively in commercial galleries and insitutions. She has recently exhibited at Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam; The Eastshire Museums in Scotland, Kilmarnock; Camden Arts Centre, London; Sculpture Center, New York; Thomas Dane Gallery, London; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; and Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany. Her work is featured in numerous public and private collections such as the Tate; the Victoria and Albert Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and South Gallery, London.
In 2006, she was listed on the Pink Power list of 100 most influential gay and lesbian people of 2006.[2]
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.[3]
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.[4] 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.[5]
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