Obscura, Nadene Milne Gallery - 2019
The Nude has been a troubled motif in the Western art for well over a century. The old hierarchies that placed the “life study” at the apex of the classical “beaux arts” teaching pyramid are long gone, and the seedier and more clichéd iterations of the nude in historical painting and sculpture seem largely to have defeated its expressive potential.
Paper & Sculpture, Fox Jensen McCrory Gallery - 2017
New Inks & Sculpture, Fox Jensen Gallery - 2017
Harrison has something to say as an artist. His observations of the human form goes well beyond the skin and sinew. His is a quietly intrusive eye that captures psychology and emotion without falling prey to its theatre. These new inks and bronze sculpture demonstrate that when this facility is challenged by constraints of time and material that what he produces becomes even more compelling.
New Sculpture & Works on Paper, PG Gallery - 2016
Christchurch artist Sam Harrison's intimate sculptures contrast with concrete's use as a building material. Harrison is known for his striking representations of the nude figure through sculpture, drawing and woodblock printmaking.
Inks/ Woodcuts/ Sculpture, Fox Jensen - 2015
Founded on valuable orthodox capacities - Harrison's ability to work with the nude and to establish a practice that appears to content itself with an apparently limited scope, identifies one of contemporary practice’s conundrums. While an artist’s ability to work across a variety of platforms is generally considered positive, I prefer Harrison’s concentration and focus on the reservoir of the human form to provide a nuanced and intimate vision. What initially may appear restrictive, opens up vastly in his hands.
New Sculpture & Drawing, Jensen Gallery - 2015In the relatively modest number of years that Sam Harrison has been working, his approach to making has set his practice aside. In acontemporary landscape that can feel overpopulated by casual pastiche and diffident “neo-dada” assembly, Harrison’s work is clearly driven from a defiantly different position.
New Sculptures and Drawings, City Art Depot - 2015
New Sculptures and Drawings by Christchurch artist Samuel Harrison bears witness to this artist's ongoing exploration of the human body. In sculpture, prints and drawings he explores the physicality of the naked form, challenging norms of classical portraiture, deliberately transgressing Renaissance ideals of beauty and the art historical exaltation of the nude with a relentless, often confrontational allegiance to shape, form and texture.
Sculpture, Fox Jensen Gallery - 2014
T.J. McNamara: Masterly work recalls Rodin The younger artist, Sam Harrison in the Fox/Jensen Gallery to the right of the door, has a traditional manner. His considerable reputation has been founded on modelling human figures, often life-size in plaster and, when possible, casting them in bronze. His style owes a good deal to the great French sculptor Rodin, in that his surfaces show evidence of the work of hands and attitudes of form that express emotional states.
Sculpture & Paper, Jensen Gallery - 2013
There is a classical beauty and stilled strength in the work of Christchurch-based Sam Harrison that is quite out of step with his Gen Y years. As borne out by their elegant gallery display here. His waxed plaster on steel sculptures and accompanying woodcuts (pictured is Gretchen) offer the perfect counterpoint between tension and repose.
Sculpture/ Woodcuts, Fox Jensen Gallery - 2014
Sam Harrison’s newest sculptures yet again extend the reach of this young artists practice. Each move that Harrison makes resists the prevailing doctrine of fashion and art world parlour games.
New Sculpture and Woodcuts, Fox Jensen Gallery - 2011
Sam Harrison brings a sensibility and a facility to making sculpture and woodcuts that is exceptionally rare. These capacities are significant alone but that they are combined with an acutely observational eye and a maturity suggest that Harrison is doubtless making some of the most engaging work by an artist in this culture.
Work, Fox Jensen Gallery - 2011
Conveying suffering are two new sculptures by Sam Harrison at the Fox/Jensen Gallery. These are expressive nude figures done in a manner that goes back through Rodin to Donatello.
Woodcuts and Sculpture, Jensen Gallery - 2010
Harrison is interesting in that he plays off contrasting surface qualities - almost like a formal abstractionist. Some parts of the plaster bodies are shiny smooth and waxed so they look wet, other parts are dry, lumpy and raw. They have a gritty, crumbly coarseness in texture, especially around the extremities such as toes
Fallen, COCA - 2008
Fallen, Sam Harrison’s March exhibition, surprised many of COCA’s visitors familiar with his work, in the first instance, it was a mature and consistent body of work for a young artist, with an impressive and subtle dialogue established between printmaking and sculpture. This was not immediately evident in its underlying imagery of portraiture, and in Harrison’s confident manipulation of materials and dramatic contrasts of light against dark.
