Ecology, architecture, sculpture, and photography are some of the disciplines that intersect in Ackroyd & Harvey's work, revealing an intrinsic bias towards process and event.
Often working outside the gallery space and in diverse contexts, they are acclaimed for large-scale architectural interventions where they grow landmark buildings with seedling grass.
In 2003, they grew the entire vertical interior space of a disused church in South London; the following year contributed to European Space 9th Sculpture Quadrennial in Riga, Latvia; and in 2007 realised their largest temporary living public artwork FlyTower on the exterior of London's National Theatre.
They have received the NESTA Pioneer award and Wellcome Sci-Art award for their work utilizing the light-sensitivity of the pigment chlorophyll in making complex living photographs in grass, and have exhibited this work worldwide including the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art, (Seville), Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne (Switzerland), SF Camerawork, San Francisco (USA), Santa Barbara Museum of Art (California), Exit Art (NY), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (USA), Rice Gallery, Houston (USA) and Big Chill (UK).
Since 2003, they have made a series of expeditions to the High Arctic with Cape Farewell, looking at the effects of climate change on the ecosystem and have shown the resulting work Stranded, a skeleton of a minke whale encrusted with crystals at London's Natural History Museum, the Liverpool Biennial and Japan's Miraikan Museum.