Research centre
Art and Design Research Centre

Date
2008

This body of work explores and questions the conventional longevity of the exhibition and the categorisation of the exhibited object

This body of work explores and questions the conventional longevity of the exhibition and the categorisation of the exhibited object, influenced aesthetically by the Dazzle camouflage techniques of the early twentieth century, and conceptually by Dazzle’s historic precedent for the functional instrumentalisation of contemporary art.

Harrison’s series of bespoke interventions were fabricated using techniques of marquetry, joinery, and metalwork to embrace the utility of the designed object and to challenge the reverential status applied to contemporary art objects. This enquiry was first disseminated through the commissioned permanent art work, Willkommen. Bienvenue. Welcome, C’mon In, as part of the exhibition ‘This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many Things’, Eastside Projects (2008).

Working within the parameters of extant designed forms, Harrison pursued a near absurd level of commitment and care in the fabrication of new objects. In 2008 he substantially repositioned his practice to undermine its role in the production of contemporary art commodities. Harrison began creating works to be permanently installed in the functional contexts that define their form. Through embracing the gradual tarnishing, wear and value deflation that would occur, he challenged their role as luxury collectables.

This enquiry progressed through further interventions for public institutions, non-art public spaces and most recently through the exhibition ‘Shapes and Colours’ at West Lake South Gallery (custom bicycle components).

The work exhibits a conscious denial of the standard business concerns of practicality, economic imperative and margin, to produce objects that could not have been mandated by traditional incentives of market or commercial imperative. The obsessive attention to detail and craft is tacitly excused through the object’s functionality. The intention of this art work is to challenge the rational quantification of labour and to make ambiguous the various judgements inherent in its categorisation as design, craft, or contemporary art.

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