HSBC - Grass Art at Wimbledon, ambient UK

HSBC - Wimbledon Artwork Ackroyd & Harvey

As part of HSBC’s partnership with the 2008 Wimbledon Championships, JWT London commissioned leading British artists Ackroyd & Harvey to produce a unique artwork using the medium of grass. The piece that Ackroyd & Harvey have produced is a fascinating combination of art and science - by projecting a black and white negative image onto a patch of grass as it grows (in a dark room) they use natural photosensitive properties of the grass to reproduce photographs – thus using grass as a living photographic medium. From a distance they look like any other monochrome photograph; up close they look like perfectly ordinary grass. Typical exposure time is just over a week, with the image projected for 12 hours a day. For this work, they photographed three people at Wimbledon prior to the tournament, and displayed the resulting grass versions of the photos on three large panels in Merton Park, where the tennis fans have been camping and then queuing for tickets this year. Next to the piece you can read about the three people featured who represent the essence of Wimbledon: Tara Moore, competing in the qualifying tournament; Eddie Seaward, head groundsman at Wimbledon for the last 15 years; and Lizzie May, a coach for the Wimbledon Junior Tennis Initiative.

Agency: JWT London
Russell Ramsey (Executive Creative Director)
Axel Chaldecott (Creative Director)
Laurence Quinn (Copywriter)
Mark Norcutt (Art Director)

Artists: Ackroyd & Harvey
Art Buyer: Stuart Heyburn
Account Manager: Tanya Hamilton-Smith
Account Director: Will Kirkpatrick
Client: Heather McCracken, Brand communications manager
Darren Keff (Creative)
Phillip Meyler (Creative)

Adland® is supported by your donations alone. You can help us out by buying us a Ko-Fi coffee.
Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
comment_node_story
Files must be less than 1 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg gif png wav avi mpeg mpg mov rm flv wmv 3gp mp4 m4v.
tangomania's picture

what's the relevance between hsbc and the tournament?

purplesimon's picture

When I read the accompanying text it's more obvious. HSBC is the world's local bank (or something like that, I'm not in fact-checking mode). Wimbledon used to be a local tennis club that has grown to global status. There's your connection. Probably.

Anyway, it's cool and, as it's only a few miles from my house, I popped along to see it during the Championships. It was in my local paper - happily not globally distributed! Looked really impressive close up. The art, not the local paper.

Dabitch's picture

grass = money in slang? ;) I have no idea why they chose to sponsor tennis.

alex's picture

I've never heard that one.

Dabitch's picture

Maybe it's my own personal term for money. (I might have gotten my languages crossed in my head - it might be Swenglish - I'm doing that a lot lately).

Allan1's picture

Grass is green, and people often use green as a slang for money.

Neo's picture

I'm willing to just love the artwork and thank HSBC for it without worrying about the connection just because its that cool.