Jeffrey Harris : {Suite} Wellington
{Suite} is pleased to announce the arrival of two major Jeffrey Harris paintings at the Ponsonby gallery alongside a selection of work from the early 1970s.
Religious and Allegorical Painting was created in Wellington in 1973 when Harris was 23 years old. The painting draws from Christian allegory and iconography filtered through a distinctly New Zealand lens: a farmyard with a grim twist. The landscape pictures New Zealand as a lost paradise, a place of suffering and sacrifice; the figure of Christ portrayed not as a revered deity but as an artist who has been cast aside. Such imagery draws immediate comparison to the crucifixion paintings of Colin McCahon, Michael Smither, Paul Gauguin, and Francis Bacon.
Harris painted White Painting in 1988 while living in Melbourne. Unlike the personal or biblical narratives often perceived in his work, its liminal composition and enigmatic subject matter offers little in the way of anecdotal reading. The work features two impassive figures, each ignoring the other’s presence. Around them, an assemblage of dismembered limbs and decapitated heads float, encircling the figures and confining them within their own private realm. In place of story, White Painting presents a study of psychological states and connections that hint at possible relationships, affairs, temperaments, and the profound silence of things left unsaid.
Woman with Red Hat & In Her Room at Night were made by Harris in the early 1970s. Both scenes are rendered in pastel on paper, with compositions bisected into two halves and figures placed in the immediate foreground. The first portrays a lone woman crowned with a scarlet hat, its brim blossoming wide around her head and casting her face in shades of red. Set against a multicoloured landscape, the piece juxtaposes the internal world of the individual and her surrounding environment. The second, an oil and pastel piece from the Les and Milly Paris Collection, brings viewers into an intimate domestic scene. A woman – donning a similarly striking red hat that acts as the focal point of the composition – and man appear caught at a moment of embrace. His hands hover tentatively over her arms. A night-time cityscape glimmers through the window. Similar to Woman with Red Hat, the drawing is compositionally divided, representing a separation of perspectives or emotional states within this shared moment.
The final work, Portrait of my wife (1971), portrays Harris' then wife and fellow artist Joanna Margaret Paul in a domestic interior. Paul was a multifaceted visual artist, poet and filmmaker with a remarkably vast and versatile body of work. She is portrayed in a moment of quiet introspection, her gaze directed away from the viewer. The painting is a companion piece of a self-portrait by Harris that was exhibited at City Gallery's Imagined in the context of a room, a major retrospective celebrating Paul's career and legacy.
For any further information about the works or to request high resolutions images please contact {Suite} Director David Alsop - david@suite.co.nz or call/text +64 21 956 663
