Inks Woodcut Sculpture
Fox Jenson - Auckland 2015
In the modest number of years Sam Harrison has been making work, he has already established a defined position that sets his work aside. In a contemporary landscape that is littered with a casual blend of pastiche and hot glue, often under the guise of neo-dada assembly and distressingly fashionable diffidence, Harrison's work feels driven from a defiantly different position.
Founded on valuable orthodox capacities - Harrison's ability to work with the nude and to establish a practice that appears to content itself with an apparently limited scope, identifies one of contemporary practice’s conundrums. While an artist’s ability to work across a variety of platforms is generally considered positive, I prefer Harrison’s concentration and focus on the reservoir of the human form to provide a nuanced and intimate vision. What initially may appear restrictive, opens up vastly in his hands.
Harrison has long been able to make sculpture and woodcuts that depend on close scrutiny and observation to deliver an intimate and sensitive portrait of human form and psychology, and to these media he has recently added the most extraordinary inks. These flamboyant "paintings" carry a sense of speed and drama that feels immediate and potent against the consideration and patience of the woodcuts, but in the reality the inks’ intuitive quality comes from a very practiced and lengthy regime of repetition, observation and rigorous editing.
In this current exhibition a carefully selected group of inks will sit alongside a number of new sculptures in both bronze and plaster. Increasingly the sculptures Harrison makes are also the result of his ability to work quickly, avoiding the traps of staging and finish. He appears to see and make in the same moment and though this cannot be the reality, it is this ability to extend the moment of seeing that is special to his practice.
Harrison's work has been acquired by collections in Europe and Asia through Art Basel Hong Kong and recently by the National Gallery of Australia. Harrison also won a major public commission in NSW where his Seated Woman II was chosen to commemorate the history and achievements of the Women of Woollahra. Situated in the beautiful Blackburn gardens, Harrison's sculpture has become one of the most loved public commissions in Sydney. The Wallace Arts Trust has acquired a breadth of works over a number of years that includes monumental woodcuts, series and significant sculptures.
Andrew Jensen November 2015
