Portfolio: Jessica Harrison

Ruth Barker discusses work by Jessica Harrison, who graduated from college this year with an offer to exhibit at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. Portfolio showcases the work of new writers and artists.

Tucked away in the recesses of the SNGMA, the victorian landscape of Jessica Harrison's tiny 'Motor Mouth' collection is strikingly juxtaposed with the heavyweight sweep of its mighty neighbour, Jannis Kounellis' 'Works: 1958 - 2005'. Behind an elegant vitrine-like window, her polished bell-jars contain slender phthisic structures using meticulous casts of Harrison's own teeth together with orthodontic implements and sections of motorbike parts.

The museological allusion of the glass case presentation points to a clear reserve. The absence of any visceral quality within the work is remarkable given the ergonomic qualities of each piece's component materials. The work implies a straightforward narrative - that of a ghastly and mouth-shattering motorcycle accident - but this violence seems contradicted by the artist's detached manipulation of the components. Individually, the manufactured teeth, dental equipment and machine parts emphasise a pragmatic logic. Her commitment to her aesthetic, however, robs each material of its original function, reframing them as decorative or embellished miniatures; objects of beauty rather than use.

'Motor Mouth' is firmly located within a long and well-explored tradition of self-portraiture through which artists (notably female) have used their bodies as both subject and object within autobiographical practice.  Harrison, as if displaying jewellery, chooses to duplicate and display her teeth-casts as artistically appealing rather than grotesque, fragments of self. This spurs on a consideration not just of Harrison's own experience of invasive dental surgery, but also questions perceived limits of our body and its image, with echoes of a curl of hair preserved forever in lover's locket, or a child's lost milk-tooth folded away in a mother's drawer.

Harrison's expert use of the perhaps archaic trapping of the bell-jar clearly reflects Sylvia Plath's exploration of the female psyche through her canonical book of the same name. In seductively blending materials she presents a crafted yet fetishistic collection of curiosities in this unusually oral take on female self-portraiture.

Ruth Barker is a Glasgow-based artist who completed her MFA at Glasgow School of Art in 2004. In addition to her individual practice, she is a founder member of the collective, Something Haptic, and Trajectory Publications.