Jessica Harrison

TOUCH STONE

'Touch stone' (working title) is a series of works in progress that I began earlier this year based on research into the tactile nature of human experience and knowledge. Beginning with a small ball of clay, I manipulate the form, working blindly to distance optical dominance and push the tactile into the forefront of sculptural process. Ending with what appears to be a random shape, I then translate this into stone, scaling up the piece, exploring the scaling up of sensation and the trace of touch. What is left is a description of the space in between the fingertips, a trace of the felt space uninterrupted by the eye, its dimensions determined by the body. This feeds in directly to the way the sculptures are received by the viewer, the compulsion to touch and try and compress the stone with the fingertips difficult to suppress. It is the impossibility of repetition of the form that seems to heighten the sense of tactility, and it is this relationship of sculpture and form to the body that I am exploring throughout my practice, in film, lithography and sculpture. 

UKYA PROJECTS:

National Biennale: Derby 2010