Simon Harlow
MIRRL
Lewis Harley
sit down
15 February – 14 March 2020
Simon Harlow and Lewis Harley created a new design object especially for A-M-G5’s space in Oxford House, Glasgow – a table and bench seat, incorporating the material Mirrl, almost hewn into the negative space of a 1000mm x 1000mm x 1000mm cube.
MIRRL
Developed by Harlow and Harley, Mirrl is a solid surface material on a birch plywood substrate made using resin and colour. It is custom made is small batches using a technique inspired by Japanese lacquerware from the island of Hokkaido and has a distinctive organic pattern. In the object for A-M-G5, Mirrl was used to provide a small self-contained environment to sit in – a place that one may go to do some thinking. This is a nod to specific allocations of space and material within daily Japanese life that are chosen to represent, or allow access to, certain states of mind.
The new work we developed for A-M-G5 was a first for us, we had never created a whole environment in Mirrl before, let alone in a singular colour way. It has changed how we actually look at and think about the material and its uses. We don’t just see it as something to make objects from anymore. Sitting in the piece we found, and others noted, that it felt nice to be somehow inside the material, almost wrapped up by it, like being clothed by it. We can now visualise projects where Mirrl is the whole background to a space, including walls, floor, ceiling and all the 3D elements within it, where we create an environment that envelopes the viewer – much like when you are in a forest or swimming in water.
Harlow and Harley, July 2020
The object created for A-M-G5 is now the subject of a limited edition book which includes a text specially commissioned from Andrew Meehan.
