Brent Harvey, Step.
Brent Harvey, Bedhead on Cross, 2008. Mixed media on panel, 43x60 cm.
Images reproduced courtesy of the artist.
New Zealand born and now Queensland based artist, Brent Harvey (arrived in Australia, 1975), reveals the random pleasures that can be discovered within the city's surface in his paintings and photographs. Harvey's work can span from the figurative to the abstract. Indeed, he was the runner-up in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, 1994. Harvey has received many awards and commendations in prizes including The Alice Bale Art Award, and in 2007 he was a finalist in the Tattersall's Landscape Art Prize. Harvey has held over twelve solo exhibitions since 1977.
Harvey is a competent technician and it is refreshing to see him following his passion There are several references in Harvey's recent work to the Spanish artist, Antonio Tapies, but the scale is completely different. Harvey's works are intimate. Tapies has sourced his imagery from the world that surrounds him in Barcelona including graffiti, architectural features and domestic or folk crafts. For Harvey's work to have some visual similarities to Tapies, most notably his palette and gestural approach, is not so strange when you consider the similarities between the Australian and Spanish landscape and climate. There is also a relationship, perhaps due to climate and the relaxed life-style that ensues, between the Australian notion of the larrikin and Spanish bravura. For further information visit Brent Harvey .com.