In her latest exhibition The Night Before Rebecca Harris introduces us to a clandestine twilight realm where myth intersects with reality. Born from a childhood fascination with fairies, imp-like winged characters play a leading role in Harris’s paintings. They emerge in the mute quiet of darkened night to inhabit a world littered with human detritus, building their lives in and around the human sphere. Mischievous, sometimes malicious and often with a hint of debauchery and self indulgence, Harris’s fairies boast human vices and traits and so become an analogy for the modern world. “They are like humans and the small objects that surround them take on monumental representations of the state of the world” (1)

Harris’s poetic otherworldly scenes evoke a sense of childlike wonder and playfulness yet at the same time explore a broad complexity of serious issues. Allusions to colonisation and the endemic versus indigenous are ever present. In A Dangerous Sort of Game a part-rat fairy temptress bedecked in gorse, initiates a dangerous liaison with a part-fantail fairy as a weka unwittingly becomes spectator in the drama unfolding. In At the Root of it all (Potato Utopia) and At the Root of it all (Kumara Utopia) we see the dichotomy of two different cultures (European and Maori) represented not only by the potato and kumara, the marae and European village but also by the wings depicted in each group of fairies. Modelled on real butterflies, the fairies in At the Root of it all (Kumara Utopia) bear the wings of the Kahukura (the New Zealand Red Admiraal) while those in At the Root of it all (Potato Utopia) bear those of the introduced Monarch butterfly. In many of the other paintings fairies bear the wings of the Cabbage Moth, a common pest in New Zealand.

Full of satire and irony, Harris’s unique blend of allegory and metaphor is immensely enticing and provocative. Symbolic references are rich in meaning and lend a timeless sense of narrative. Reminiscent of Dutch still life painting of the 17th and 18th centuries, the fruit depicted in Night Cap provides a powerful allusion to the passage of time. The golden apple is also a symbol often used in mythology as an object desired by women. The fly nearby lends strength to the suggestion of decay, vanishing youth and the consequences a consumer society’s loss of control.
Often interwoven with environmental discourse and myth, the sophisticated level of social and political dialogue in Harris’s work reminds us just how accomplished and relevant she has become as she has progressed from a ceramic and printmaking background to an artist producing paintings of real importance and substance. Harris’s compelling painterly skill is assuredly delivered in The Night Before with each painting treated with a characteristic attention to detail, refined brushstroke, rich colour and beautiful luminescence.

1. Artist statement, 2009.