Anthony Harris
Anthony Harris studied Fine Arts at the Natal Technikon under some of South Africa’s foremost artists; Andrew Verster, Patrick O’Connor, Paul Stopforth and Gavin Younge. After graduating, he taught art at various institutions in Natal over the period 1977 to 1984 and began to exhibit professionally.
His first major exhibition was held at the Walsh Marais Gallery, Durban, in 1978. Since then, he has held over 49 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions both nationally and internationally including New York, London, Beijing (2010 Beijing Biennale) and Melbourne.
He has recently completed a commissioned work by Mandela Bay Development Agency (MBDA) (in collaboration with Konrad Geel) “Voting Line” – a 36.6-meter life size laser cut sculpture which is positioned at the base of the Great Flag at the Donkin Reserve, Port Elizabeth
His work is found in private, corporate and public collections in South Africa, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, U.S.A, India, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Holland.
“In the new series of work titled "Deep Time", "Mapping" and "Mapping Boundaries", Harris conceptually explores land issues: the concept of geologic time, social geography, political, culture and cultural identity. "Maps codify man’s existence…"
"The desire to mark and socialise "space"; thereby making them "places" is a universal human urge. Southern Africa is a multiplex mosaic of cultural marks. The earliest evidence of land-scaping is the 2 million years of tradition of stone tools wrought from fine-grained rocks. Then is the 100,000 years of symbolically using and marking earth-ochres. We have still more marks - San rock-art; Black farmers' stone walled towns, Khoe herders' trek routes and White settlers telephone poles. All these marks make imprints like contour lines on the land and betoken layers of relationships between inner mind-scapes and outer land-scapes." Modern science has established, after a long and complex history of developments, the age of the Earth at around 4.54 billion years”. This time frame in geological term is known as “DEEP TIME”.
