AMSTERDAM — At first glance, Jessica Harrison’s “Shirley” looks like one of those Victorian-style porcelain collectable figurines so popular in the 1980s — the kind that Ms. Harrison’s mother and grandmother used to display in glass vitrines in the sitting room.
But on closer inspection, Shirley’s head is not where it should be; it is severed from her neck, and seated on the palm of her hand.
This artwork is part of a series by Ms. Harrison, a British contemporary artist who buys cheapish porcelain figurines on eBay and turns their little lives into scenes of self-inflicted horror, often involving their own disembowelment.
Ms. Harrison’s work represents the radical edge of contemporary ceramics art — one end of the range that a new exhibition at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, the Netherlands, hopes to convey.