Actually there are two Harris exhibitions at the Eastern Southland Gallery - Selected Works from the Bosshard Browne Collection and Four Decades: Selected Drawings 1970 2003. The latter was selected by the artist and the works belong to him.
Harris (b.1949) is a neo expressionist and his images not only display much energy in their making, they express the extremes of unhappy emotional states by depicting gruesome violence, severed limbs and heads, hanging corpses.
Bosshard Browne says she didn't follow any plan or strategy when collecting but trusted her eyes and intuitive responses. Having lived with them now for more than 40 years, she has found ''they have always enriched my life''.
The selections are in different galleries. Harris's selection is arranged in chronological order, starting with the wall on your left as you enter and progressing from there around the room. This is a great opportunity to see the artist's development.
The first six display a very delicate draughtsmanship and this whole wall is more figurative and has less tonal contrast than we find further on. With the exception of one work on the far wall from the entrance the entire selection is monochromatic.
The result is not monotonous but rather restrained and tasteful. Although there is much anguish and violence here, there is also intimacy and gentleness, for example in Joanna Asleep a pencil drawing of 1971 showing Harris's then wife, another artist, the late Joanna Paul, curled up on a couch.
The far wall shows works from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. The 1980s ones are more abstracted and contrasty than their predecessors and the 1990s ones even more so - and those are bigger. They were made with compressed charcoal and show mask like faces whose eyes and mouths are black caves.
The next wall has works all from 2001 and have titles, many with references to singing. They show heads, mostly with open mouths prominent lips and bared teeth.
These are Breughel faces and whatever they may be singing about they are faintly lubricious and distinctly feral. The last wall has 12 works, all ink on paper from 2003.
These are abstracted and the subjects might be a fanged animal, severed dogs' heads and perhaps an owl or cat. These are ghoulish images of the horrible and horror but the result is strangely calming. In fact the whole room is as if these are palimpsests of suffering where the pain has been absorbed and partly effaced, trauma transmuted into meditation.
The Bosshard Browne selection includes paintings and coloured pastels so the mood here is not all restful. Untitled (Crucifix) an acrylic on paper of 2012 is inscribed ''For Kobi and Patricia''.
It shows a black cross which appears as if with foliage sprouting from its extremities but all apparently ravaged by fire, a simple, powerful image.
Call it a Loan, a large, vibrantly coloured painting of 1981, is a major work by this major artist. There is a fallen man, dead or dying on the ground, a woman crouching nearby.
The whole image is intensely busy and energetic, not a punch, an explosion. There are more understated things here. An early ink on paper is monochromatic.
People in the Garden in Front of House Whenever I look up I See Paradise has figures floating in the sky including one hanging upside down. The people on the ground look shocked and anguished as if this was not their idea of heaven. There are 21 works in this room.
At the Dunedin Public Art Gallery Mary McFarlane's (b.1951?) installation Room Temperature is a signal achievement by an artist who long ago proved she is one of the most able alive in New Zealand.
There is a wall panel which discreetly doesn't mention she is the widow of Ralph Hotere (1931 2013) perhaps because people have misguidedly said she imitated him. She didn't.
They collaborated sometimes but Hotere collaborated with others, males, and people didn't make the same accusations about them. The installation consists principally of a wire mesh enclosure with various household items inside.
The enclosure is high, made of metal frames with wire mesh like that of a bed frame through which you can see but keeping you out - or keeping invisible occupants in?
There's a chair inscribed 'Who cares?'. Ms McFarlane cared for Mr Hotere after he suffered a stroke. Some of the furniture is in good condition, some not. This is about domesticity, decline and death. It is elegant, eloquent and deeply moving.
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
