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Brother. In: Possibilities and Losses: Transitions in Clay, group exhibition with Clare Twomey (curator), Linda Sormin, Neil Brownsword

Harrison’s research investigates the possibilities that clay offers in its different states, as a liquid, plastic and solid and, ultimately, the potential for the direct physical transformation of clay from a raw state utilising industrial and domestic electrical systems in a series of time-based public experiments. Harrison treats clay in unconventional and seemingly inappropriate ways, which is variously applied onto electrical equipment or other host objects. The resulting works are wilfully idealistic and impractical attempts to permanently change, in full or in part, the properties of clay or, in combination with other raw materials, to produce a temporary sensory alteration such as the generation of sound or an aroma to fill a space.

Brother was commissioned for the exhibition Possibilities & Losses: Transitions in Clay, exhibited at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima) in May 2009, funded by the Crafts Council and co-curated by University of Westminster Research Fellow, Clare Twomey, and Curator of Contemporary Craft at mima, James Beighton. As major new commissions in direct response to the gallery spaces, together they offered an insight into the experimental large-scale clay work emerging from contemporary, contextually aware and material-specific artists. Positioning itself at a moment of change in contemporary ceramic practice, Possibilities and Losses exposed contemporary thinking and making in this media. “These artists challenge traditional perceptions about clay practice and its relationship to the historic model of craft, they present certain possibilities for clay as a specific media, while at the same time recognizing that change is inevitably at the expense of that which came before” (mima Media Release: 23 April 2009). The show was previewed in The Guardian by Robert Clark and subsequently reviewed in Ceramic Review and Crafts Magazine. An accompanying exhibition catalogue included essays by Glenn Adamson and Jorunn Veiteberg. 34,791 people visited the exhibition.