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JCB BUCKET SERIES (2008) Brendan Jamison, microcrystalline and paraffin wax over wood, 15 sculptures, dimensions ranging from 30 x 20 x 25 cms to 76 x 70 x 58 cms, Queen Street Studios Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Brendan Jamison is one of a group of younger Northern Irish artists whose works are entirely unmarked by The Troubles. His development has been rapid and engaging. He owes little to the Irish tradition of sculpture, insistently reminding one of the British sculptors of the '80s and '90s such as Richard Deacon, Tony Cragg, Richard Wentworth, and Anish Kapoor. Jamison's affinities with them are marked: playfulness, inventiveness, unusual use of materials, and the drive to generate exhibitions across several continents. In 2001, he was wrapping a tree with multi-colored threads of wool, creating an aura for it, transforming it, and, in effect, dematerializing the object. This notion of transformation continues in his recent work, whether by wrapping, coating in wax, or even creating objects out of sugar cubes. Jamison has stated that his practice "attempts to highlight an in-between state or middle path, a calm place where extremes," such as "organic and architectural, male and female, Eastern and Western...rigid and fluid, sexual and spiritual," can be seen side-by-side or in gentle convergence. Left: RED TUNNEL detail (2008) Brendan Jamison, wool over wood, 12 components, 212 x 500 x 600 cms. Right: DECAYING GREEN JCB BUCKET (model GTHB51) (2008) Brendan Jamison, microcrystalline and paraffin wax over wood, 46 x 42 x 26 cms In the first of his two recent exhibitions, "In-Between", the wrapping element came to the fore. Three large-scale installation pieces, Yellow Spiral Staircase, Red Tunnel, and Blue Bridge, all made out of wood, had been wrapped in brightly colored wool, specially ordered from Tivoli Spinners in Cork. Yellow Spiral Staircase has a strong sense of the playful and humorous. Lacking handrails and ascending from the floor to the ceiling, it is deprived of the normal staircase function, or actually going somewhere. One could imagine this child-dangerous, as opposed to child-friendly, piece being resurrected in another life in a playground for adults. The same slightly joky, slightly surreal ambience pervades Red Tunnel, though this much more ambitious piece taps into archetypal imagery, tribal sculpture, and darker recesses of science fiction. The construction, which echoes womb-like caverns and can be entered, was based on the sci-fi drama Earth: Final Conflict. This description, however, makes Red Tunnel seem more solemn than it is. Unusually, this piece wears its imagery lightly. It's interactive (small children are irresistibly attracted to it), and its feminine elements (the warmth and softness of the wool, the amniotic connotations of the womb) are balanced not only by the male under-pinning of wood, but also by small boys entering the forbidden zone. With the "JCB Bucket Series", Jamison shifts into a different gear. The idea for the exhibition was generated when he was walking around post-conflict Belfast, currently one huge redevelopment site. JCB back-hoes are ubiquitous in a redevelopment area, and what particularly appealed to Jamison were the animal-like qualities of the "head" or bucket when it was "protectively" down, at ground level, at nighttime. The works, initially based on Lego versions of JCB buckets, are made out of microcrystalline and paraffin wax over wood. If one thinks of the sci-fi world of Alien, particularly of the bio-morphic, surreal, and menacing elements, and then introduces a disturbingly playful sense of humor, you get JamisonWorld. With this series, the socio-political elements of regeneration are barely registered. As in classic sci-fi, the world of the inanimate is made animate. "Exuberant" is perhaps too strong a word, but the world of toys, of childhood, of the ogre-ish imaginings of fairy tales is re-animated in these works. The most successful examples are those in which the transformative element dominates. The wax, suggesting stalagmites and stalactites, drips, for example, into fanged incisors. Baby JCBs are birthed and sheltered, kangaroo-style, by the "mother", or the mother form develops a noticeably pregnant swelling. Rigid strata are transformed with wax, transmuted and transposed - the ordinary becomes the extraordinary. It's such a pleasure to welcome a real sculptor who has a deft, playful touch, as well as an over-active imagination. Brian McAvera
McAVERA, BRIAN. "Reviews: Belfast and Portadown, Northern Ireland: Brendan Jamison", SCULPTURE, International Sculpture Centre, New Jersey, July/August 2009, Vol. 28 No. 6, pp. 70-71
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| © Brendan Jamison 2008-2010 |