The exhibition looks at the boundaries of materials in relation to human and non-human entities. Events unfolding all around us, microscopic to macro, we find ourselves tangled between them. These seemingly small happenings become heightened, fixated on and replayed over and over when they circle a significant moment.
MIRROR, Plymouth, 2024
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this morning he asked if the skin on his thumb was dead yet?
it was 5.30 am and he’d been cradling his thumb since yesterday afternoon I tried to respond without using the word dead
about a cm of skin was hanging off of his left hand
he asked if I could cut the skin off using his crocodile scissors I said I didn’t think that was a very good idea
he tugged and tore the flap off screaming and threw it on my bed
I’ve been collecting horsehair for about a year now it feels synthetic and sometimes smells like piss
I can always tell if the hair has come from a gelding or a mare by its smell
the gelding’s hair doesn’t smell like urine. this is because their urethra is located under the stomachs
To get the hair i introduce myself by lowering my head and walk slowly towards the horse
I breath into their nostrils offering my hand at the same time
I then run my hand down their neck, along their back and slowly down their quarters. if they’ve not moved by this point there is a mutual trust
I use scissors to cut approximately a foot off of their tail. its like nylon, if the scissors arnt sharp enough it can take a couple of attempts
this clumsy cut it feels how the cutting of an umbilical cord looked
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Ceramic, leather, metal and sound works based on an ongoing narrative. The text follows a fictional character called Fled who explores Bowman’s own curiosities for cars, horsepower and the language of advertising. Her writing generates symbolic objects, acting as physical footnotes to the text. In the exhibition these objects were revealed in a theatrical diorama.
Audio work as part of the launch of the second volume of Yellowfields at East Side Projects. Yellowfields a curated publication for and by emerging artists and art professionals. Throughout each season thematic project groups work together to produce a collaborative publication and event which explores the artworks of the artists who are involved.
This publication features four artist texts by Jade Montserrat, Freya Dooley, Jo Lathwood and Harriet Bowman, connected through an essay by Ellen Wilkinson.
Feminism, economy, race and sustainability run through this season’s connected practices, underpinned by a shared interest in the labours of production which manifest through physical and emotional experience.
Touring Show in partnership with Devonshire Collective, supported by Arts Council England
The exhibition unfolds through motifs of collision, slippage and rupture, a layering and juxtaposing a range of materials that include ceramic, metal, glass and rubber. Throughout the exhibition, Bowman pushes her materials to the edge of their capabilities, repurposing and transforming them to explore their cyclical, often hidden relationships to each other.
Writer Daisy Hildyard essay’s Vehicle Portrait written in response to conversations between herself and Harriet over the year leading up to the show. The pamphlet is available to read online in ‘writing’
Stoneware ceramic, horsehair, 2022
Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne, 2022, Touring Show in partnership with Exeter Phoenix, supported by Arts Council England
The exhibition’s title speculates on the motives of two men, encountered once while visiting a classic car show, who abruptly left their café table when the artist began breastfeeding her child. Bowman’s photographs, taken on the same day, act as a departure point for engagement with her interest in the fallibility of the body and its vulnerability to chance, accident and collision. A table-top sculpture becomes an arena for Bowman’s ceramic sculptures; an attempt to restage, replay and understand past events in a diorama of ceramic, pregnant car bodies.
