Playful Rodney Harris

Rodney Harris is an English artist who works mainly on site specific Public Artwork. In particular, he explores the relationships between people, places, ideas and aspirations.

Could you introduce your artwork, what’s the idea behind it?

What it is, it’s a brick relief, it’s a low relief sculpture of an armchair and some wall paper, so it’s like the inside of a building but you know, because it’s made in bricks it’s gonna go outside.

So is it going to be displayed in a park or something?

Yeah, hopefully it’s going to be in the  Municipality  Headquarters, here in the town. So it will just go up against a wall, so it’s almost like a kind of illusion of light of an interior.

What inspires you to make this kind of art?

Urm, well I’m playing with bricks really, you know, it’s as simple as that. Bricks are a building material and its flat and so really I’m just playing with it. Where I’m from, I’m from Bristol and there’s a lot of clay in Bristol. When I was a student I wanted my work to have some kind of social role, not just like having it sitting on a shelf or in a gallery, I wanted it to be in society. I was introduced to brick clay because it’s so common locally and the way that children, when they go to the beach, play with sand – really I’m just playing with the clay that’s beneath the ground where I live and like here, there’s a lot of clay so it seems like the most - like somebody that lives in the woods makes things out of wood.

So are you enjoying the symposium?

Yeah, I mean because it’s the first day I’m sort of reserving judgement. You never really know until a few days have gone but there are lots of students and everyone seems happy to be working. They’re doing what I ask them to do and I’m happy because I’ve got a nice apartment, I’ve been given an apartment for two weeks, I’m getting paid and I got a free flight, I’m getting good dinner, I mean, I’ve gotta be happy, haven’t I?

Haha yes, do you think these events are useful for other artists?

 Maybe, I think it’s probably more useful for the students actually because the artists that are here are most likely demonstrating skills not really breaking new ground – you do that in your own studio when you’re on your own and you’ve got time. The thing about Symposiums is that you don’t really have any time, especially a terracotta symposium where you have to make something within a week so that there’s time for it to be dried and then fired and built so I don’t think it makes any difference to other artists, actually.

So what’s it like working with the students?

It’s good, yeah, I mean I don’t speak any Turkish but fortunately some people do speak English so yeah it’s good. I mean it’s very different here then it is in England because there are very few ceramic students in England now, so all the ceramic courses have shut and it’s kind of quiet, it’s not very vocational working in ceramics.

Last question, what are your plans for the future?

I’m going to build a building. I currently work in a studio building, with other artists and my plan is to use my skills to make a building but a building as a piece of sculpture so it will be like I am playing with a building. So that’s my plan for the future, to sell my house and to make a building which is a piece of sculpture in itself even though I can then work in it. It will be a functional building but it will be sort of a feature. And I don’t know, maybe other people can come and work there but I don’t know.

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