Meaning lies somewhere between humour, absurdity, and mortality in Brent Harris’s paintings and prints; his curved lines often hold human-like forms, each searching for moments of revelation, salvation or connection—just like we all are.
Born in Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand in 1956, Harris moved to Melbourne in the early 1980s to study art, shortly after coming out as a gay man. As the HIV/AIDS crisis began, Harris painted the series that cemented his early career, The Stations, 1989, featuring 14 geometric works referencing the Stations of the Cross, religious images depicting the journey Jesus undertook on the day of his crucifixion. Even now, religious and art historical imagery from Mary Magdalene to Colin McCahon to Philip Guston resonantly infuses Harris’s work.
Over the last 40 years Harris has innovated upon his flattened surfaces and developed his printmaking practice—all while carefully instilling quiet emotion through his art. With a recent survey in New Zealand, Harris is now exhibiting with an Australian showing of 40 years of work, titled Surrender & Catch. Currently at TarraWarra Museum of Art, the show will travel to the Art Gallery of South Australia in mid-2024. Ahead of the survey, editor Tiarney Miekus caught up with Harris in his Melbourne studio, talking about dreams, death, surfaces and curves.
TIARNEY MIEKUS You’ve often talked about the importance of the dream stage
