Steve Harrison

Over Exposed, 2009

15 x 16.7 x 4.8 cm

Crossfire

Legge Gallery 26 May - 17 June 2009

Looking at everyday objects and how they can changes in value due to a superimposed meaning I came across Steve Harrison. When does a bowl become sculpture? Using a kiln that he himself built and through altering the temperature of the kiln he creates the colour, texture and shape of the bowls. By selecting the rock individually (all within a 25km radius of his workshop) for the clay and extracting the koalin slip for the glaze, when you look at his work, the viewer is taken on a journey, seeing the individual grains used for the clay, the work of firing each individual piece and he the adjustment of temperature changes the nature of the bowl, as well as the colour and shape. Some of the bowls are warped when they come out of the kiln and often the colour is also altered. Another interesting point of his work, when using the bai tunze method of firing the bowls are translucent.

This piece above is very interest because the substance used in the glaze creates amazing affect when fired. It has a chemical reaction to the heat, combusts and drips down to form a puddle in the middle of the bowl, or the side when the bowl is set at an angle. Similarly to the painstaking process he undertakes to create the bowls, the names he gives to the objects gives them an added authenticity and meaning.

I guess this ties into the Quotidian Object as he turns an everyday object into a work of art, turning them into precious objects as an antidote to the consumeristic and materialistic nature of today's society. Also bringing the element of organics and into the object, adopting a radical localism.

I want to also put up a photo of a work I saw in Vienna in 2007, I have searched for the name and artist of the work but have not yet been successful. I saw this just as I was becoming interested in art, so i didn't have the thought to note it down. I was displayed in the Museen Quartier Wien, on the pavement in between the buildings. The visual impact of this work was quite spectacular, As it it quite big and dwarfs the viwer.