Lindsay Harris, Nyoongar painter and mixed-media artist, was born in 1947 and lives in the Western suburbs of Perth. Harris began a serious engagement with art when he undertook an associate degree in Contemporary Aboriginal Art at the University of Western Australia in 1998-1999. He went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts (Art) with Honours from the Curtin University of Technology in 2006, and in 2008 completed a Masters of Art at the same University. Harris has developed an understated and compositionally spacious abstract aesthetic which expresses his sense of affiliation with his ancestral lands around Kwolyin, which is 200km East of Perth in South-Western Australia. As he writes on the Emerge Art Space website: 'I feel that my art has to give a sense of intimacy and connection to my boodja (my land)’. He makes use of natural pigments and resins collected from his country in conjunction with acrylic paint, and also applies his pigment with sticks which for him evokes the scarification of land as well as ceremonial scarring. He works on a range of supports, including canvas, muslin, hemp and board.
Harris has exhibited regularly since 2006, participating in a number of exhibitions at Emerge Art Space in Perth. These include the solo exhibitions 'Moments in Time’ (2006) and 'Skin of the Land’ (2008). Other exhibitions have included 'New Work New Faces’ at Perth Galleries (2006) and the NAIDOC Week Moorjditch Mar-Daa Art Award, Armadale Redevelopment Authority (2008), for which Harris’ work was highly commended. 2008 was a successful year for Harris: he won the Vincent Prize at the Vincent Art Awards, Town of Vincent, and his painting 'Tracks to Kockerbin Rock’ was shortlisted for the 25th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. A recording on the Award’s website contains the following statement from Harris about the work: 'The painting represents the tracks to Kockerbin Rock and the cave there where Old Kokitj lives. Kockerbin Rock was a sacred place for Nyoongar couples, long time ago who could not have children. They would journey to Kockerbin Rock located in the heart of my country and would ask Old Kokitj (old spirit man) for a child. He would reply “next time I see you, you will have a child”’.
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- Writers:
- Fisher, Laura
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2011
