Rachel Harrison’s work draws from a wide range of influence, wittily combining art historical and pop cultural references through a diverse play of materials. In Nose, Harrison’s figure towers on a cardboard box plinth as an abject gargoyle, adorned with a plastic joke shop nose. Grotesque and funny, Harrison’s humour derives from its carefully structured, yet open-ended suggestion, each element building up to a plausible punch line. Using visual language as a subversive tool, Harrison parodies expected comparison to artists such as Franz West and Paul McCarthy, appropriating styles and motifs with subtle knowingness, wielding artistic process as a mode of investigation.

Rachel Harrison

Glamour Wig

2005
Wood, polystyrene, acrylic, ladder, synthetic wig, digital photograph
170.2 x 71.1 x 40.6

Like many of her creations, Rachel Harrison’s Glamour Wig plays sculptural dress-up by combining abstract forms and color with manufactured readymade products. Pairing the silver glitz of a rock-star wig with the aluminum of a utility ladder, its long, bare legs leading up to a gaping mouth, Harrison’s figure suggests the comical decadence and sexual innuendos of a Glam Rock queen. Glamour Wig, a sculptural “space oddity,” lends itself well to the intentional artificiality, synthesized sound, and androgyny for which this genre became notorious.