Craig Craft

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An exhibition by Craig Harris, furniture maker

Craft ACT Gallery Two: 18 September to 1 November 2008

Text by Jas Hugonnet

What do you get when you cross surfboard construction techniques with furniture design?

The sea has long been a place that has influenced design in terms of dynamics, flow and specific detailing. In Craig Craft, Harris not only puts the word craft on his sleeve, he wears the label with pride creating furniture using cold moulding processes, fibreglass finishing and shaping techniques utilised by surfboard manufacturers. While relishing in the making process and the nature of materials, Harris also wrestles with the definition of his work and where it sits in relation to people's perception of what is craft, art or pure function. As both designer and maker he is in a unique position to explore this relationship and push his ideas by being in direct contact with the materials he is working with. Essentially what Harris aims for in his work is the embodiment of skill, ingenuity and dexterity and while he concedes that for some his work will be purely something you can sit on; he lets them do it in style.

The development of these new pieces of furniture has involved experimentation of new production techniques in the workshop and the introduction of fiberglass, composite foams and metal into his work. Primarily developing this work for an exhibition as opposed to commissioned work has enabled Harris greater flexibility in the exploration of material limits. He expects that the experience will allow for future developments which he can then apply to commercial work. This new work is a natural progression from Harris's previous furniture designs that explored the construction and deconstruction of the modular form. The main departure we see here is a focus on designs that are perceived as a complete unit.

Often Harris will push the physical and structural limits of a work to achieve a desired visual effect. In doing so he expresses the idea of furniture as an element of sculpture within a space, something you can approach and read with space all around it. The works in the exhibition are intended to be read from all sides and angles, approached and negotiated with an open hand that then clasps onto the work like one would clasp the rails of a surfboard. Through using the metaphor of sea faring craft, Harris embodies in his work the movement of objects in water, especially surfboards in the way that they float and are manoeuvred. Continuing with this theme Harris even makes his own grained veneer with fiberglass as it is used in the making of surfboards, to connect with and comment on the furniture industry's love affair with grain and wood species.

One gains a sense of Harris' diverse skills set through this exhibition in what could be described as a smorgasbord of furniture. While his furniture is an extension of the body employing geometries and techniques that are vastly different to each other, they all share details and processes born out of a passion for surfing and the sea. The development of these works as a series of test pieces that were then simultaneously developed into Craig Craft highlights his use of curvaceous line to express dynamism; cutting through space like a board rider on a perfect wave.

Jas Hugonnet
August 2008

 

Images

• Banner - Craig Harris, JAC (Just a Chair), 2008, Tasmanian Blackwood, leather and de-waxed shellac. Photo: Steve Keough.
• Right hand side - Works in progress. Photo: Jas Hugonnet