Simon Harrison's highly skilled draftsmanship and imagination bring to life dark and fascinating worlds. The product of multiple influences, from the surreal to Japanese animation, to sci-fi, to comic book, the works sit somewhere between beauty and bad taste. They are an extension of the British literary heritage of J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman and J.K. Rowling in that it is the element of adventure and fantasy which makes these works enjoyable, but the underlying serious messages which ensure their impact.
Self taught, Harrison worked on 2000 AD for 6 years, as well as projects for magazines such as NME and record covers. His work has evolved and now he largely creates pieces or series in response to what he sees as an environmental crisis and the need to counter the consumer excess and damage we are doing to the planet.
Escapes into fantasy are emblematic of uneasy times. Hybrids of human, animal, technology and science, the figures inhabit not another planet, but our planet, or how it could be. The kitsch and colourful, the other-worldly and grotesque, the adventurous and playful images probe ideas of an uncertain future.
The environmental story is here given to us in seemingly digestible stories from characters like Agent Waste who are symbols of the characteristics preventing us from positive change, to the Protest Band, produced as a positive response to the chaos of environmental damage. Born out of Harrison's interest in martial arts, the two young figures Shuk and Dudi represent the positive and the negative, based on pro-nature Buddhist and Taoist beliefs. Other figures are conceived as eco-pirates, their cause is the environment. Harrison's other series, 40 Shades of Green, based on a poem about the environment, opens up another world, with plastic dogs and robotic, artificial beings, perhaps the only people who will survive an environmental disaster. The humans in these works wear masks, unable to breathe normally on a devastated planet, and the only saviour, The Saint, is reduced to being an environmental assassin.
Simon Harrison's exhibition inaugurates a new gallery on Charing Cross Road in London's West End called The Gallery @ Adventure Ecology. Adventure Ecology was founded in 2005 by David de Rothschild and is fast becoming a leading online educational resource focused on tackling the real issues surrounding the relationship between people and the environment.
Simon Harrison: Adventures in Waste
27 October - 15 December
Adventure Ecology
125 Charing Cross Road
London WC2H OEW
gallery@adventureecology.com
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