Brent Harris: Towards the Swamp
Brent Harris: Towards the Swamp
Artist Brent Harris explores uneasy psychological states in works that are both elegant and grotesque.
Harris’s distinctive process begins with automatic drawings – a way of working that allows the subconscious to rise to the surface – which are then progressively refined: figures swim up from inky darkness and revelations appear in the sky, while narrative form begins to emerge from abstraction. Centred around his important Swamp series, the exhibition Brent Harris: Towards the Swamp explored the influence of Edvard Munch’s woodcut 'Towards the forest II' on this New Zealand-born Australian artist’s work. It included paintings and prints from a major gift to Christchurch Art Gallery, and this exhibition video in which the artist talks about the making of his work.
Brent Harris: Towards the Swamp was on display from 6 November 2019 – 23 February 2020.
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Exhibition
Brent Harris: Towards the Swamp
6 November 2019 – 23 February 2020
Brent Harris explores uneasy psychological states in works that are both elegant and grotesque.
Interview
Appalling Moments and Abstract Elegies
Brent Harris is an Australian artist, well known for a practice that explores the productive tension between abstraction and figuration. By locating emotional content in figures that he develops from automatic drawing, his works frequently express an uneasy human subjectivity. But while his imagery deals with intense psychological states, it is often also darkly funny: monsters of the subconscious, both grotesque and ridiculous, rise to the surface in a process of emotional identification and gradual refinement.