"it's such a pleasure to welcome a real sculptor who has a deft, playful touch, as well as an over-active imagination." Brian McAvera

   SCULPTURE magazine, July/August 2009, published by The International Sculpture Center, New Jersey, USA

AUTUMN 2016

McAVERA, BRIAN. "Sugar Rush: interview with Brendan Jamison",

Irish Arts Review, Autumn 2016, September to November, Vol. 33 no. 3,

pp. 289, 376 - 383, ISSN 1649-217X 

SUMMER 2014

MULCAHY, JOHN. "International: New York: Sugar Metropolis",

Irish Arts Review, Dublin, Summer 2014, June-August,

Vol. 31 no. 2, p. 42 ISSN 1649-217X

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SUMMER 2009   25 years of Irish art: a personal selection  

Brian McAvera makes the case for a reappraisal of Irish artists who, he believes, have been undervalued by the art establishment over the past quarter century

Brendan Jamison

This artist is only thirty. He's a sculptor who often uses unusual materials {wool,sugar} and who clearly derives from the great generation of British sculptors who included Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor, Tony Cragg and Richard Wentworth. Like Deacon and Wentworth, he has a strong sense of the playful, of the innocent - and therefore potentially dangerous - world of childhood. Upon occasion, as in the more installational nature of an earlier show at the Millennium Court, he can plug into the concerns of Tribal Art, albeit with a feminine delicacy. As with Deacon and Kapoor, objects, in his hands, shift from the inanimate to the animate, becoming metaphorical. In the JCB Bucket series the construction industry of Belfast {which is still busily re-arranging the skyscape}, metamorphosed into fifteen JCB Buckets, which were of varying sizes, vibrant colours, and wax-dripped textures. Think of the biomorphic, surreal and distinctly disturbing world of the Alien films, and then introduce an equally disturbing and playful sense of humour. As in classic fairy tales the absurd seems perfectly normal. A JCB Bucket gives birth to a baby JCB, wax dripping onto fanged incisors. It's too early to say how this artist will develop but he is maturing and exploring at a rapid rate. He has none of the baggage of the 'macho' tradition of Irish sculpture and thankfully none of the romantic whimsy. He's definitely one to watch.  

Brian McAvera is an art critic.

McAVERA, BRIAN. "25 Years of Irish Art: a personal selection: Brendan Jamison", Irish Arts Review 25th Anniversary Edition, Summer 2009,

Vol 26 no. 2, p. 58

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DECAYING GREEN JCB BUCKET (model GTHB51) (2008) Brendan Jamison

microcrystalline and paraffin wax over wood, 46 x 42 x 26 cms

IRISH ARTS REVIEW Autumn 2008 

AGAINST THE CANON

 
"Brendan Jamison is by far the most interesting sculptor

to have emerged in the last decade in the North"  

Brian McAvera

McAVERA, BRIAN. “Against the Canon”, Irish Arts Review, Dublin, Vol. 25 no.3, Autumn 2008, p. 87