ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Harley Price (BA Fine Art) is a London based artist, working in 3D and Installation. Harley studied Fine Art at the Sir John Cass School of Art, Media and Design. The work of Harley Price seeks to explore the area between innocence and play and oppression and domination and looks at absence, loss, injustice, isolation and fragility. The objective behind his work is defined by a sense of ethical and moral responsibility to expose and draw attention to acts of repression and oppression. His installations and 3D works are a direct response to his anger and revulsion at cases of personal and systematic abuse and human rights violations, both current and historical. A product of 1960’s England, his childhood, during which he spent a short period in foster homes, was a Clockwork Orange world of Captain Scarlet, Action Man and British WWII military glory set against a backdrop of the Vietnam War, Northern Ireland and the institutionalized corporate and political lies and abuse of our times.His works draw equally from the abuse of power and socio / political oppression, the corruption of innocence, the abuse, exploitation and manipulation of children and his own experience of abuse. Utilizing toys and games and elements and textures of his childhood and often employing traditional methods of toy making, he draws on the associated qualities of the materials he works with, such as lead, bone china, wood, leather, felt and rubber. He engages in a physical and mental dialogue with concept and materials that steps between the premeditated and controlled and the unforeseen and instinctive through a dark and disturbing world of ‘Boys Own’ adventure.