Thomas Harris: Sleeping Orchard TemplarsMarch 2 - 29, 2012
Three central themes are explored in the film Sleeping Orchard Templars by British
born Los Angeles based artist Thomas Harris. These are the desire for forward
movement and purpose in one's life, the multiple skills and personality types
one must embody to overcome a variety of challenges in order to attain the
aforementioned movement or purpose and finally being propelled into the unknown
as result of the first two themes culminating. In the film, the protagonist, a
leafy costumed figure, awakes from a state of sleep and begins to explore his surrounding
environment by jumping, rolling and crawling through a scene of domestic
architecture. Set to a soundtrack of varying gothic droning guitar riffs, the costumed
figure is faced with a series of abstract challenges in order to meet and conquer
these different tests, through changes in physical form, failure, and death,
the character is reborn taking on a new form and provided with the skills and
knowledge to achieve the final task.
Thomas
Harris was born in Bristol, UK in 1975. He received his BFA in Sculpture in
1997 from the University of Lancashire, United Kingdom and his MFA in Sculpture
in 2001 from The University of Texas at Austin. His selected group exhibitions
include: Monte Vista at T.A.M: 12 Gauge Series, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA, 2010; Resound, Hunt Gallery, St. Louis, 2010; Sound Series 01: performed as part of J.U.B. with Lauren Lavitt and Brandon
Engstrom, Elder Street, Los Angeles, 2009; LAX: group show, Los
Angeles Airport, Los Angeles, 2008; Collaborative performance with Lauren
Lavitt, The Box Gallery, Los Angeles, 2008; Orchard
Project, Pirate, Burford, U.K. 2005; Collaborative project with Ian Pedigo,
Fluent Collaborative, Austin, 2004; The Jack S. Blanton Museum, Austin, 2001; Revelations Texas, in conjunction with the International Sculpture Conference, The
University of Houston, 2000. Harris lives and works in Los Angeles.
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Isolation Room/Gallery Kit: Four Walls and a Ceiling
Upcoming in 2012
This is an in-progress project that is built on an ongoing interest in containment. In this case, Isolation Room/Gallery Kit will bring together four separate walls and a ceiling sent out to five different artists who have been instructed to make work directly on and/or in response to their respective wall. We are close to securing venues in the UK and Germany to bring the walls back together, reconstructing the 7’x 7’x 9’ modular Gallery Kit (2010) inside the exhibition space. This system allows for a series of smaller encounters within one collective collaboration, and will aim to illustrate the possibility of complex associations that come together from five studio locales in one space that use the specifications of one form (Gallery Kit), creating a dual site specificity.
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