Wangaratta-born artist exhibits at gallery

Published on 14 October 2025

Wangaratta Art Gallery will present the first solo hometown exhibition of nationally acclaimed artist Matthew Harris, offering visitors a unique opportunity to experience the work of the Wangaratta-born talent.

The Melbourne-based artist creates thought-provoking works in painting and sculpture that critically examine social power structures and historical narratives. His exhibition, Overland unpacks the lasting impact of colonisation on the Wangaratta region and its First Peoples, presenting a new series of paintings informed by historical documents.

Alongside this new body of work, Overland features With a Warm Embrace, 2023, a textile sculpture held in the Wangaratta Art Gallery collection. Created in tribute to Harris’ grandmother, who spent her working life at the Wangaratta Woollen Mills, the sculpture is inspired by her original design for a pair of koala toys handmade from her husband’s clothes and remnant wool. Harris reimagines this familial object using recycled felt and acrylic yarn sourced from the mills, honouring both personal memory and local industry.

The Wangaratta Woollen Mills are an important part of the history of Wangaratta, attracting post-WWII European migrants looking for work, fuelling the growth of Wangaratta's textile industry and adding to the rich cultural mix of Wangaratta and surrounding region. Harris’s sculptures are a uniquely captured artistic record of this page in the history of Wangaratta. As Harris notes, this work, now held in the Wangaratta Art Gallery Collection:

“.. is based on stuffed koalas my nanna made out of the coat she was wearing when she met my grandfather. The original koalas are an inseparable pair. Though probably designed to be toys they’ve always been too special to play with and sit together in a cabinet as relics, now in my mother's house. Aside from ourselves and a few other bits and pieces the koalas are all we have left of my grandparents, they both died when I was little. Nanna worked at the Wangaratta Woollen Mills most of her life so the koalas are all sewn up with wool from that factory, in a shade of grey the factory conveniently titled 'Koala'.”

Overland will also feature an important series of large-scale paintings entitled The British Museum, 2023, which was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in 2024, on loan to Wangaratta Art Gallery for this exhibition.

Wangaratta Art Gallery Director, Rachel Arndt says:

“Matthew Harris’ work is significant to our region in so many ways, and I am very excited to be presenting this important work at the gallery. We are privileged in being able to secure the loan of The British Museum series of Harris’s paintings from the National Gallery of Victoria - a fantastic opportunity for our visitors to see work from the state collection, in Wangaratta.”

The British Museum in London, UK, holds a staggering six thousand objects, many culturally significant, that are connected to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In the series of six paintings, Harris depicts a silhouette of these artifacts and physical remains in the British Museum collection, in their racks and boxes. Former NGV curator, Michael Gentle explains that:

“In developing the work, Harris accessed the British Museum’s collection online and painted, in alphabetical order, a selection of these objects housed in the museum. Rather than providing detailed renderings, Harris gives an intentionally obscured representation, a meta-critique of the archive’s own tendency to abstract and decontextualise the objects within its possession.”

Harris has exhibited at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Victoria for Melbourne Now 2023, Gertrude Contemporary, Neon Parc in Melbourne, Murray Art Museum Albury, Galerie Pompom, Alaska Projects, Sydney, and the Yokohama Triennial in Japan. His work will feature in the upcoming Adelaide Biennial 2026. He is represented by FUTURES gallery in Melbourne and The Commercial in Sydney.

An exhibition opening celebration will be held on Saturday 25 October from 4pm. All welcome. The exhibition will run from 25 October 2025 - 18 January 2026.

Please visit www.wangarattaartgallery.com.au for further information.

Image 1: Matthew Harris, With a Warm Embrace, 2023, recycled industrial felt, Wangaratta Woollen Mills acrylic yarn, gesso, acrylic paint, river stones, polyester filling, each 95 x 80 x 75 cm. Wangaratta Art Gallery Collection. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by the artist.

Image 2: Matthew Harris, Yeddonba, 2023, Ochre, charcoal and acrylic on hessian, 153 x 200cm. Wangaratta Art Gallery Collection. Acquired with the assistance of The Robert Salzer Foundation and Wangaratta Art Gallery Friends Inc.

Image 3: Matthew Harris, Sky Without Stars exhibition, 2024, The Commercial, Sydney.