Matthew Harrison

DAZZLE DRAW PROJECT, ongoing, various dimensions. (click for next image…)

 

DAZZLE DRAW PROJECT, ongoing, various dimensions. (click for next image…)

DAZZLE DRAW PROJECT, ongoing
2006
Various dimensions.
Various hard wood timbers, e.g. Walnut, Ash, Cherry, Beech, Oak etc

A top drawer is removed from a cabinet in the office of an Art related space. Using the removed drawer as reference for accurate measurements, a new drawer is made to fit back in to the cabinet. The new drawer is painstakingly crafted from many different types of hard wood timbers. Hundreds of individual bits of timber are joined or inlaid to produce one drawer.

The new drawer is proposed as a permanent addition to the office furniture, it is to be used as normal.

The aesthetic of the new drawer references Dazzle camouflage a paint scheme used on ships during World War 1. The scheme developed from Cubist and Futurist movements via the British Vorticists. Each drawer in the series will be named after a First World War ship that sported Dazzle camouflage. As the series of drawers spreads out to various locations they have the idea of a kind of fleet.

The Dazzle drawer project is ongoing; I intend it to be a series of many drawers in many different locations.

Statement
Formed through conceptual rigour and strategy my practice develops through an involved process of merciless art direction. It is then carefully crafted with an attention to detail that can border on the obsessive.

It is vital my ideas are located firmly at the core of the objects and projects I produce. I work hard to avoid attaching or shoehorning surplus material in to them. Works are made as something not made about something.

The work operates at the periphery, like a prop or prototype contained within a larger event. Some are installed precisely on a threshold; others are shifting further from it. They are able to leak from their usual spaces, and also extend out of the normal finite time scale associated with showing work. With this leakage from normal duration and site, works become absorbed in to the ‘real world’, this transition allows its status to be examined.

Many objects produced within my practice find their way into the world as a speculative gift. The gift is a device. Its owner and the subsequent site of the work become implicated in its systems and life.

Contact

Email Matthew Harrison