New Sculpture & Drawing
Fox Jensen Gallery, 2015
In the relatively modest number of years that Sam Harrison has been working, his approach to making has set his practice aside.
In acontemporary landscape that can feel overpopulated by casual pastiche and diffident “neo-dada” assembly, Harrison’s work is clearly driven from a defiantly different position.
Founded on the capacities to observe and draw, Harrison has established a practice that appears to content itself with what some might say is the limited scope of the nude. But like the Still Life is for Jude Rae perhaps – a ready scaffold for seeing anew – Harrison’s work also depends on a close quarter scrutiny of the human form. Both these artists’ practice identifies a contemporary conundrum. While an artist’s ability to work across a variety of platforms is increasingly considered positive by audiences primed for entertainment, it is the concentration and force of will of these artists to provide nuanced and intimate inquiry, which makes their work so special.
Harrison has long been able to make sculpture and woodcuts that require the most careful observation, delivering intimate and sensitive portraits of human form and psychology. To these media he has recently added the most extraordinary ‘inks’. The patient regime of the woodcut is replaced by an almost calligraphic immediacy that feels vigorous and fresh. As initiative as these new inks might feel, their undeniable quality comes from practice and repetition, study and editing.
In this new exhibition a carefully selected group of inks will sit alongside a number of new sculptures in both bronze and plaster. Increasingly, the sculptures also rest on his ability to work quickly, avoiding the traps of “staging” and “finish”. He appears to see and make in the same extended moment.
Harrison’s work has been acquired by collections in Europe and Asian through Art Basel Hong Kong and recently by the National Gallery of Australia. Harrison also won a major public commission in Sydney 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 the city. The Wallace Arts Trust in Auckland has acquired a breadth of works over a number of years that included monumental woodcuts, drawings and significant sculptures.
- Andrew Jensen, November 2015
