Broken dolls

Jessica Harrison is an Edinburgh based sculptor who has recently created a body of work called 'Broken'. At it's simplest the 'Broken' series is customising ready made porcelain figurines, the kind that you find on your Aunties mantelpiece but Jessica Harrison brings a gruesome, dark side to the usual broken ornament.

I remember as a child, my Aunt was an avid collector of a certain type of china figurines and had a cabinet crammed like a rush hour bus with ladies in full 18th Century evening dress, jostling each other with out streched elbows, or a raised fan or umbrella or theatrically sniffing a bunch of flowers.  Away from the crowed cabinet was the hot press and in their was where she kept the figurines that were unfit for display having been disfigured by the antics of either kids or pets!
Jessica Harrison's broken series takes me back to that hot-press where the china heads sellotaped to the waist of their corresponding body, there was no gorged throats or extracted eye balls as with Jessia Harrisons' creations but there is a nice play at work where the fragility of Porcelain figurines reflects human frailty. You can see her work as part of the HEY exhibition currently at Le Halle saint Pierre in Paris or if you like you can buy signed limited prints from her website which you can find at www.jessicaharrison.co.uk.