This exhibition brings together over 150 paintings, drawings, studies and prints, traversing Brent Harris’ practice and stylistic shifts, featuring a selection of works from 1987 to 2022.
Moving between figuration and abstraction, Harris deploys both humour and the grotesque to examine psychological subject matter and visualise his complex and contradictory feelings. Addressing the experience of the body and desire, faith (and what follows death), and childhood memories of porous familial relationships, Harris’ ambiguous forms derive from his use of the Surrealist technique of automatic drawing to access unconscious imagery.
Brent Harris, The Untimely (No. 7), 1998, Melbourne, woodcut, printed in red, cream, black, purple inks on Japanese paper, 59.5 × 47.2cm (block), 81 × 60.9cm (sheet). Gift of James Mollison AO and Vincent Langford through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2017. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Art Gallery of South Australia
6 July to 20 October 2024
Adelaide
