The art that made me: Harrie Fasher

One of Australia’s leading contemporary sculptors, Harrie Fasher is known for her large-scale semi-abstract forms, evoking human figures and horses. These mutable forms seem to hold within them a living presence of innate emotive strength and vulnerability.

Based in Portland, a small town near Lithgow in the New South Wales Central Tablelands, Fasher has built a foundry and a 900-square-metre industrial studio in a section of the former Portland Cement Works, a historic site which is in the process of being transformed into an arts, cultural and residential regional centre. There, with the help of the foundry team, Fasher casts her own work and mentors other artists.

Using the ancient lost wax technique, the artist experiments with how far she can extend the casting process. Fasher sculpts clay and wax forms, casts segments in bronze and works intuitively to assemble the final sculpture. Modelled forms, retaining her fingerprints, are combined with textures and organic structures fashioned from natural materials, such as rope, bamboo and burnt sticks.