Anya Gallaccio was born in Paisley in 1963. She studied at Kingston Polytechnic and Goldsmiths College, University of London. Gallaccio is one of the leading British sculptors of her generation, yet the ephemeral nature of her chosen materials, such as flowers, fruit, ice and grass, means that few of her works remain permanent. Most of them simply decay, rather than being acquired by private or public collections. The unpredictable time-based qualities of her installations relate to the history of performance as much as the tradition of sculpture. This fascination with cycles of transformation and degeneration, properties inherent in the organic materials she uses, lies at the heart of Gallaccio's practice.

Many of Gallaccio's early works were set in large derelict spaces. In 1996, she constructed a thirty-four tonne cube of ice in an old Pumping Station in Wapping, East London. This vast block of ice slowly melted over time, a process accelerated by the ball of rock salt buried in its core. She has also responded to historical sites. In Glaschu 1999 she took a pattern from a carpet design found in the archive of a local factory and recreated it in foliage on the floor of the neo-classical interior of Lanarkshire House in Glasgow.