Brent Harris at NGV

Looking through the Brent Harris Exhibition at the NGV the piece the stood out most to me was The Stations (1989). Having been brought up as a Catholic I am very familiar with the Stations of the Cross, and I remember as a child seeing them depicted around the church. Each scene was depicted in a fairly life-like manner with clear figures and lots of detail. This goes back centuries to the Middle Ages when majority of people couldn't read or write, so to explain the stories of the Bible (in this instance the Stations of the Cross) detailed paintings, drawings and stained glass windows were created to teach people. These were often very ornate with a great deal of colour.

This is quite different to Brent Harris' The Stations. Whilst he takes the same reference story of the Stations of the Cross, his depiction is quite dramatically different, as is his audience. Harris has taken his prints right back to very simple compositions made up of basic rectangles and a few curves, in black, white, and greys with a tinge of red here and there. Through the use of highly abstracted compositions Harris captures the emotion and pain of the Stations of the Cross, and brings them into a new context, for a new audience.