Swamp (No. 2)

Brent Harris’s paintings and works on paper have made frequent reference to watery themes and places, both in terms of their titles and their imagery. These works are also linked by personal content and the expression of emotion, often unformed and indefinable. Throughout the Swamp paintings, languid white forms emerge from a dense black ground. Dark and impene¬trable, the swampy ground gives rise to strange forms, which bend and sway as if being moved about by gentle currents. Some are organic plant-like forms, which have grown to form dense veils against the darkness. In others, strange mutations have occurred and suggestions of human form—legs, feet and arms, a breast, testicles—emerge out of the watery darkness. This work makes this bodily reference most directly with an additional fine black line defining the legs of a standing female figure. The figure is bending so that the top of its form, a mass of long hair, sweeps close to the ground. Strangely, the 'feet’ and 'hair' of the figure are joined, and appear to be connected to another form situated just beyond the left edge of the picture. This fluid mutability suggests that the figure is undergoing a transition, or perhaps is not yet fully formed.

Text by Kirsty Grant from Fieldwork: Australian Art 1968–2002, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2002 pp. 132-134.