If you’re into the eerie, the creepy and the vaguely disturbing, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s latest exhibition may be right up your artistic alley. Jeffrey Harris: Renaissance Days ticks all of those boxes, while providing a vibrant snapshot into the work of one of New Zealand’s major contemporary artists. Think a collision between glossy magazine collage, manikins pinched from Hallensteins down the road, and your Nan’s old photo album from the 80’s. Completed over the course of several years, this exhibition provides a vivid snapshot into the Dunedin-based artist’s work.
Renaissance Days does not overwhelm the visitor with a huge number of works; rather, a small number of pieces are given space to impress upon viewers their intense colours, strong forms, and uniqueness. Each painting is like a small world of its own, rich in tiny details that come together to form striking and powerful scenes. Unusual girls stand before intricate farms and fields composed of minute brushstrokes, gazing vacantly out at the viewer, lost in their patchwork worlds. In Harris’s crucifixion works, biblical stories as old as time are anchored in a bright New Zealand-esque landscape, challenging and distorting our understandings of religion, time and place.
But perhaps the real stand out here is Family Group (1975 – 2012). My personal favourite for its creepy, entrancing, and varied subjects, this large work focuses on a family group of thirteen doll-like people in varyingly drab shades of blues, greens and yellows. Not one of the family members seem to meet your gaze, but the feeling of being watched will send prickles up your spine. The vacant stares of the children focus on something beyond (or right behind) us, dull yet piercing at the same time. Each member of this eerie group seem like their faces have been carved from wood, or papier-mâchéd into uncanny representations of real humans. This painting both entices you to come closer, to stay longer, to look further – and to leave the gallery at a panicked run and not stop until you reach the street. Or the other side of the Octagon. Or Dunedin, depending on how spooked you are by the uncanny and the strange. Either way, for the love of art or the lols, Renaissance Days is a viewing experience not to be missed.