‘Ackland’s works bring to mind the touch of familiar materials: cool silk slips, stiff white shirts, the rustle of the wedding dress, the crinkle of white tissue, the soft gasp of the drycleaners bag. The clothes we inhabit take on something of our shape and form, a trace of us, and in so doing are no longer mass produced items but are gradually moulded to reflect qualities of their owners.’

Exhibition catalogue - Isobel Johnston
Click here for full exhibition essay

Delicately rendered, the painterly forms presented in Ackland’s solo exhibition Mementos, possess a quality of movement suggestive of the ethereal.

With an extensive career founded in the disciplines of portraiture and still life painting Margaret Ackland has more recently chosen to focus her attention on the suggestive quality of fabric met with light.

Margaret states of her practice ‘My fascination is with the world of objects, especially those things we discard or overlook. I am motivated by the passing of time in the life of a family and the traces left behind in the clothing we once wore.’

Margaret Ackland is represented in a range of national collections including Artbank, the Holmes a Court Collection and Deakin University. She has won and been a five time finalist in the Portia Geach Portrait Prize, a Blake Prize finalist and has had her work featured in Italian Vogue and on ABC TV’s Compass series.