Harris was born in Akaroa and grew up on Banks Peninsula on his parents' farm.[1] He attended high school in Rangiora, then worked in Christchurch for three years. He went to Dunedin so he could learn from Michael Smither, with whom he stayed for a year. He never went to art school but was influenced by artists such as Francis Bacon and his Crucifixions; his primary early inspiration came from art books.[1]
Style
Harris's works are mainly large expressionistic canvases depicting family groups in daily situations. These works, based to a large extent on the artist's own life, often have strong symbolic meanings for the artist.[1] From the mid-1980s until the turn of the century, Harris began producing powerful monochromatic abstracts – these works coincided with the period when Harris was working in Australia. Since his return to Dunedin, Harris's work has turned back to his earlier figurative styles, though often concentrating more on religious iconography such as the Crucifixion[1] rather than domestic scenes.
Selected solo exhibitions
1969Paintings on Paper Otago Museum Foyer, Dunedin. Harris’s first public solo exhibition.[2]
1972Jeffrey Harris Canterbury Society of Arts, Mare Gallery. Harris exhibited 160 paintings.[3]
1981Jeffrey Harris Dunedin Public Art Gallery .[5]
1984Jeffrey Harris: New Paintings, Artist’s Project No9 Auckland City Art Gallery .[6]
1993Jeffrey Harris: Recent Paintings Centre for Contemporary Art Hamilton.
2005Jeffrey Harris Dunedin Public Art Gallery. (toured) Curated by Justin Paton who described Harris’s career as, ‘full of disappearances and returns, reversals and disavowals, perplexing silences and sudden intensities.’[7]
2016Jeffrey Harris: Renaissance Days Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Curator Lucy Hammonds commented that the ‘cinematic quality’ of the paintings had the effect of putting Harris’s paintings into the ‘world of fiction’ enabling viewers to start seeing it in a way that was not dominated by the ‘biographical reading’ that has typified writing on the artist.[8]
2020Jeffrey Harris: Within the Tides The Art House Trust.[9]
Selected group exhibitions
1971Young Contemporaries (toured) Auckland City Art Gallery. The preliminary list of artists for the exhibition was done by Colin McCahon with director Gil Docking making the final selection of 38 painters and 12 sculptors.[10]
1982Carnegie International 1982, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.[11]
1984Anxious Images: Aspects of New Zealand Art Auckland City Art Gallery. Curator Alexa M. Johnston comments in her essay that in Harris’s work,’we are aware of his determination to convey an intensity of experience, to create images which stay in our minds and which can clarify and enlarge our awareness.’ The exhibition toured New Zealand.[12][13]
1992Headland’s: Thinking Through New Zealand Art Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. The exhibition was shown in Australia and the National Art Gallery in Wellington New Zealand.[14]
2003Self and Other: the Expressionist Spirit in New Zealand, Auckland Art Gallery.[15]
A book on Harris's art by Justin Paton (simply titled Jeffrey Harris) became a finalist in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Alongside the book, a major retrospective exhibition toured five of New Zealand's major public galleries from 2004 to 2006.
Notes
↑ note there is another artist with the same name: Jeffrey Harris born Leeds, UK, 1932)
↑ Whiting, Cliff; Murphy, Bernice; McCormack, John; Sotheran, Cheryll, eds. (1992). Headlands: Thinking through New Zealand Art. Sydney: The Museum of contemporary Art [u.a.] ISBN978-1-875632-04-6.
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