2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Yield Strength
"European and Koorie creative histories are referenced in Day After Day via French-Romanian modernist sculpture and Southeast Australian possum-skin cloaks. The twin figures in Constantin Brâncuși’s The Kiss hold one another so intensely that they appear to have merged into a single form which sits atop the native pelts. An antique cannonball punctures the head of one of the figures, capturing the moment of violence that severs their love story. By presenting Murrangurang, a red-and-yellow ochre painting of hearts, alongside Day After Day, Harris declares that, despite the horrors of British colonisation and its continuing legacies, Aboriginal love will always emanate from these lands."—Samstag wall text
"When viewing Harris’ works of art, audiences are confronted by the insignificance and the miraculousness of humanity, in the context of the scale and time of the universe. Distant future and deep time sit side by side in Matthew Harris’ Big Time and Baparra-banarrak. The painting depicting a constellation that will appear 65,000 years into the future hangs below a suspended meteorite aged around four-and-a-half billion years. Through his use of ochre for the sky and possum tail on the meteorite, Harris distinguishes his ever-present conception of time as specifically Aboriginal."—Art Gallery of South Australia wall text
(Archie Moore's Remnants Of My Father at the Museum of Economic Botany for the 2026 Adelaide Biennial is catalogued here on The Commercial website.)
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