Jessica Harrison turns her porcelain figures to into something totally new
Everytime I heard the words “porcelain figures” my thoughts travel back in time to my grandmother’s house and her entire collection of owls, angels and 18th century porcelain maidens.
Jessica Harrison turns her porcelain figures to into something totally new and she has taken it to the “Bizarre Level”. I would like to have Harrison’s figures on the shelf in my living room and stare for hours just like my granny did, cool isn’t it?
Jessica was born 1982 in St Bees, England. She moved to Scotland to study sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art in 2000, going on to do an MFA before completing a practice-led PhD in sculpture in 2013 founded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Her work covers different techniques and materials ranging from skin, paper, bone to ceramic, enamel and porcelain. Harrison’s porcelain figures are disturbing and at the same time fascinating. And the level of detail in anatomy and painting is just wonderful. She could win any tattoo convention in the porcelain figures category.
“Harrison proposes a multi-directional and pervasive model of skin as a space in which body and world mingle. Working with this moving space between artist/maker and viewer, she draws on the active body in both making and interpreting sculpture to unravel imaginative touch and proprioceptive sensation in sculptural practice.
In this way, Harrison re-describes the body in sculpture through the skin, offering an alternative way of thinking about the body beyond a binary tradition of inside and outside”. — Harrison’s artist statement.
