Steve Harrison
The Hand of the Other
1 - 20 October, 2007
click on image to enlarge
Smoky Clarity 2007 $750
115 x 115 x 66mm
The Hand of the Other
by Steve Harrison
We find ourselves in an era of shallow consumerism
and apparent wealth in a material sense, but we have never been poorer in time
and quality. We seem to be losing our sense of locality and community, our
corner shops and our independent Australian
identity.
My response to this excess of meaningless consumption
is to immerse my self in the hand-crafted, intentionally imperfect object as an
antidote to this avalanche of new cheap junk. My recent work in this show is the
result of many years of research. It follows my last show at the Legge Gallery
in Sydney of black ware that I called 'dirty little secrets'. I was attracted to
the intense blackness of this iron-rich rock. It was black, Rothko black, as
black as Churchill's dog. The blackness suited my mood at that time, a period of
intense introspection, from which emerged some lovely dark pieces, lifted by the
use of paler pastel glazes, all made from my local
environment.
My recent work has been described by Toni Warburton as
"radical localism"[1] as it is almost entirely made from locally prospected raw
materials. Much of it is made from my local native bai tunze porcelain stone,
this is not clay in the normal sense, but ground-up rock. Ground rock dust isn't
the most promising material to work with, but apart from the limited plasticity,
which restricts the scale and form of the pieces, there are many fine qualities
that my materials exhibit when wood fired. I am particularly fond of the intense
red and orange flashed porcelain body colour. Flashed porcelain isn't all that
common, it intrigues me that it can still be translucent and, when coupled with
the right glaze, it can be sublime.
2. cat 14
Response 2007 $750 sold
155 x 133 x 75mm
My most recent work concentrates on this lovely
flashed, naturally impure porcelain stone. I have been honing my skills as an
artist with these materials and feel that this body of work is the culmination
of so much study and research, involving the hand selection of every stone, its
crushing, grinding and eventual reforming to produce these unique pieces. Likewise the glazes are all created and
fired using the same alchemy and attention to detail. Simple stones, ashes, clay
and lime can be transmuted into soft pastel translucent colour with the hardness
and durability of porcelain.
3. cat 17
Blurred Vision 2007 $750 sold
120 x 117 x 72mm
I've thought a lot about my bowls and how I work with
them. Socrates urged me to examine my bowls well as the unexamined bowl is a
bowl not made. Over the past 30 years of ceramic practice, wood firing and
fossicking I have made some good pots and many more bad ones. I have been
inspired by the rich surfaces that I have been able to create from my unique
approach, methods and materials, while being compelled to progress by my
failures. Sometimes my pots come out much as I imagined them and at other times
the pots were not as expected, but I recognised that they were still either
better or worse than anticipated. Just every now and then I have made pots that
I am not entirely able to claim credit for (in their finished form), as they
seem to have made themselves to some extent, and it is this precise quality that
has intrigued me in particular recently.
4. cat 3
Together 2007 $750
153 x 152 x 80cm
5. cat 37
Carbon put to good
use 2007 $750
125 x 122 x 75mm
These pots started life like any other, created with
just as much attention to detail and then glazed, packed and fired with equal
effort and consideration. However, because 'shit happens', there are the
inevitable kiln collapses, stray wood stokes, explosions and disasters.
Unpacking events like these can be a bit depressing, perhaps more so than the
usual post-firing blues and initially these pieces were consigned to the
pot-holes in my driveway, where most of my work goes; all of the indifferent,
the bad and the ugly.
6. cat 18
The last breath 2007 $750 sold
122 x 116 x
65mm
Over time I have learnt to look very closely at my
work and I never crush anything in haste anymore. I have become practised at
seeing the unexpected possibilities of beauty in these 'bads' turned 'goods'.
These damaged goods can often be liberated from their cohort of dross and
polished to an unexpected state of grace.
7. cat 10
Roasted, toasted and
blushed 2007 $750 sold
128 x 125 x
75mm
I make my work as perfectly as I can, as a lot of it
is porcelain and must be thrown and turned evenly and precisely to allow the
translucency to show evenly. I can't see any point in trying to compete with
machine perfection, that is so readily and cheaply available. However, if I were
to consciously twist or bend my pots on the wheel, I wouldn't be able to turn
them evenly, and if I were to distort them after turning, I would feel a little
self-conscious about it. Porcelain needs to be turned so much drier than plastic
bodies and it would need to be re-hydrated to make it soft enough to allow for a
fluid, plastic deformation. There is something about an intentionally distorted
form that to my eye is never quite as satisfying as that naturally occurring
undulation of a finely potted rim. If the warping occurs naturally in the fire,
while it is pyro-plastic, then the movement can be very soft and elegant, but
more importantly it can take on the aura of being enhanced by the very nature of
its making, and not directly from my hand. These otherly enhanced works have a
good measure of 'mana' about them, and I like that. They are a gift in the sense
that they are not directly created, but become special by a process beyond self,
a process where something other intervenes.
8. cat 24
Once in a
Lifetime 2006 $900 sold
115 x 112 x
65mm
One of my unexpected discoveries is a deposit of
'halloysite' bai-tunze material. This halloysite has a mind of it's own. I never
know quite what to expect, and there is something very engaging about that.
Halloysite clay mineral is very much like kaolin, with the distinction that it
has an extra water molecule attached to the clay crystal that seems to make it
curl up like a rolled up newspaper; it has a weird tendency to unwind on drying
out in the early stages of the firing. This unwinding might be the cause of the
strange and unpredictable warping and cracking that can sometimes be associated
with its use. I love this unknowable quality, the intervention by the Hand of
the Other.
9. cat 20
Striving
2006 $ 900
sold
215 x
209 x 114mm
Modern middle-class life in the western world has
created the expectation of 'everything on demand'. As viewed through our
cultural lens we have been lulled into the false expectation that everything in
our lives can, and will, be perfect. We lead perfectly controlled lives.
I, on the other hand, feel an attraction to the
otherness of my mistakes, perhaps it's the out-of-self-ness of the accident.
Perhaps it's a need to experience and express the unknowable, that is so little
experienced in the lifestyle of perfection.
10. cat 22
Improvement 2007
$900 sold
210 x 216 x 102mm
Nearly all of my favourite pots today have this otherness,
they have been altered by the process of their making and it is something about
this sense of the 'other' which is added to an already good pot that gives it
its extra quality or 'mana'. This added value is true even where what is added
is in fact a void where part of the pot is missing. It is said that a scar can
make a man more intriguing or attractive, and Nietzsche observed that what ever
doesn't kill us makes us stronger[1]. The same can be true of some pots, just as a period of difficulty and
trial can sometimes fashion our own character in a better way. Maybe these
otherly beautied objects are an insight into Otto's numinous made
tangible[2]?
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, 19th century German philosopher who challenged the foundations of traditional morality.
[2] Rudolf Otto, German scholar of comparative religion. The numinous is a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self"
11. cat 35
Enough
2007 $750 sold
115 x 112 x 65mm
There are many ways of knowing, and perhaps Coue was right
in affirming that every day in every way my bowls are getting better[1]; or perhaps Harris, who maintained that my bowl is OK and your bowl is
OK[2]. I don't know, but I've seen the light, and it comes through the
wall of a translucent red-flashed porcelain bowl in such a way that I can see
the colour of the outside flashed clay from the inside. I couldn't have imagined
this was possible until it happened to me without warning. One of those moments
that can change you.
[1] Emile Coue, French psychologist, 1857- 1926.
[2] Thomas Harris, Popularised transactional analysis in 1970's.
12. cat 23
So
simple, so natural 2007 $750
132 x 100 x
65mm
13. cat 21
Depth of feeling2007 $900 sold
204 x 197 x 105mm
Now that I am more aware of the possibilities of
these damaged goods, I encourage a certain degree of uncertainty in the packing
and firing of the kiln so that there is always the possibility of that little
extra expected, but as yet still unknown something, an otherness, a something
beyond the known that maybe added.
14. cat 7
Junior Partner 2007 $750 sold
126 x 123 x 65cm
I have become quite adept at placing my work in the
kiln and firing it in such a way that can potentially transform an otherwise
ordinary bowl into an outstanding bowl, and then again it can just be another
bent bowl. Some people have called these events 'accidents', but where they are
planned they cannot truly be called accidents. This is an exercise in skill
development, just as draughting, throwing or handforming is a skill. The art is
in the intellectual exercise of decision making and the eventual judgement as to
whether the pot is worth showing or not.
15. cat 32
Simplicity 2007 $750 sold
120 x 115 x 74mm
The results are always unknown but close to the
limits of my technique and imagination. In calling up the numinous I get a
glimpse of The Other in my work and I like to believe that I have imbued some
degree of 'mana' into these bowls.
16. cat 33.
Unexpected Delight 2007 $750 sold
113 x 105 x 66mm
When I was young I wanted to believe that there
were some absolutes in life. I wanted to believe that there could be a
definition of such concepts as truth and beauty. As I've grown up and out, I've
come to realise that there will not be any absolutes in my life (other than
death and taxes). I have had to come to terms with the fact that good and evil,
truth and lies, beauty and ugliness are all relative and co-exist in each of us
all of the time. I have learnt to accept the 'duality of light', that it is both
a particle and a wave-form simultaneously - the point being that you find what
you look for. If you look for a particle, you find a particle. If you look for a
wave-form, you find a wave-form. I've been looking for the hand of the Other in
my work and I think that I've found it.
Steve Harrison
2007
17. cat 2
Purity 2007 $750
114 x 114 x 69mm
18. cat 6
Intriguing Scar 2007 $750 sold
130 x 113 x 70mm
19. cat
38.
Trust 2006 $750 sold
132 x 124 x
74mm
20. cat 30
Truth
2006 $ 750
115 x 113 x 64mm
21. cat 31
Beauty 2007 $750
115 x 91 x 66mm
