UK Artist Jessica Harrison works in various media, from porcelain to stone to what looks like frighteningly real flesh. Her series of miniature pieces of furniture made to look as though they were created from human skin are equally compelling and repulsive. Some even have hair. Eeeuuuwww.
Jessica Harrison Flesh Miniatures
Sofa, mixed media, 13.5cm x 6.5cm x 6cm
Table, mixed media, 6cm x 7cm x 5cm:
Cushion, mixed media, 4.5cm x 4cm x 2cm:
Small Table, mixed media, 5.5cm x 5.5cm x 6cm:
Clock, mixed media, 4cm x 2.5cm x 18cm:
Large Round Table, mixed media, 6.5cm x 10.5cm x 10.5cm
High Back Chair, mixed media, 7.5cm x 6cm x 9.5cm:
Small Chair, mixed media, 4cm x 4cm x7.5cm:
strong>Armchair, mixed media, 8cm x 7cm x 6cm:
Straight Back Chair, mixed media, 5.5cm x 4cm x 9cm
About the artist:
Born in St Bees in 1982, Jessica 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 funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Her research considers the relationship between interior and exterior spaces of the body, but looks neither inwards towards a hidden core, nor outwards from the subconscious, instead looking orthogonally across the skin to the movement of the body itself, using the surface of the body as a mode of both looking and thinking.
Moving beyond a bi-directional model, 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.
Jessica Harrison’s name may sound familiar. That’s because I featured her Tattooed Porcelain Figurines recently.
Jessica Harrison
all images courtesy of the artist