{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.

Read more about the works via {Suite} Gallery.