ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Harley Price (BA Fine Art) is a London based artist. A product of 1960’s England, his childhood was a Clockwork Orange, Cowboy and Indian world of Captain Scarlet, Action Man, military glory and pop consumerism set against the Vietnam War, Northern Ireland, the Cold War and institutional, corporate and systemic deception and lies.

His work is defined by an ethical and moral responsibility to expose acts of oppression and is a direct response to his anger and disgust. His work draws from exploitation, manipulation, the loss and corruption of innocence, pan-historical reference points and his own personal experiences of abuse. "I look at injustice through exploitation, manipulation, socio / political oppression and repression, personal and systematic abuse, human rights violations, capitalism and systems of control. Through the eyes of the innocent I explore the benign and the malignant aspects of innocence and play, the rejection and persecution of the disadvantaged, the valiance and sacrifice of the brave, desperation and hope, merging them into one".

He is driven by a sense of purpose, by a sense of identity with subject as well as by his rage and revulsion. His work comes from a dark place and talks about disturbing and sinister things, it attempts to start a dialogue with the viewer by illustrating and exploring the negative and endeavouring to create a reaction, therein attempting to invoke the positive in the same way that we are fetishiticly drawn to look at a car crash and simultaneously consider our mortality and purpose – repulsion / attraction.

Employing traditional artisan processes and materials [bone china, wood, lead, leather, felt, rubber, mirror and other processed materials], he invests the associated natures and qualities of the materials as well as drawing on their sexual and fetishistic aspects which he combines with elements and textures of childhood, allowing them to articulate and communicate forcefully from within the work. Utilising old and broken toys and miscellaneous bankrupt materials that have been discarded, fallen from grace or lost their commercial appeal he draws on their imbued history and deterioration [a life after death]. Using minimal input, primitive technique and crude assembly, he engages in a physical and mental dialogue with concept and materials, investing the associations of the materials into the work, he steps between the premeditated and controlled and the unforeseen and instinctive through a dark and disturbing world of ‘Boys Own’ adventure attempting to communicate with maximum eloquence to a primeval level.