Marlene Gilson OAM & Matthew Harris
After all

After all presents a selection of works by revered senior artist and Wadawurrung Elder Marlene Gilson OAM from the past decade, in dialogue with a series of new paintings by Matthew Harris whose practice draws reference from his mixed Koorie / European heritage. Gilson's practice is noteworthy for its efforts to overturn the colonial grasp on the past by reclaiming and re-contextualising the representation of historical events. Through this, she asserts the presence of First Nations peoples, before and after colonisation, on what always was and always will be Aboriginal Land. Favouring the ancestral lands of her people, and events that have occurred on their lands, as her preferred subject matter and context, Gilson's elaborately painted history paintings provide the counter to the historical representations that misrepresent such histories, through fictionalisation or erasure.  

Harris’ new series extracts selected texts, quotes and illustration from historical documents, publications and reports speaking of and about Aboriginal people, from the perspectives of the colonising British, between the years of 1839 - 1905. Elucidating the explicit racism of the documents, these works are a damning reminder of the frictional foundations of this land’s colonisation. In recent years, Harris has entwined traditional processes of Aboriginal pigment production with the western canon of minimal abstraction. In ways, this operates to invert late modernism’s adoption of Aboriginal practices as purely aesthetic forms of painterly abstraction, vanquishing their expressions of dreaming, of Country, and as culturally specific modes of storytelling.

After all places these important artists of different generations in connection to challenge which kind of histories should hold a place in our future. Respectively, Marlene Gilson rewrites how history has been recorded, and Matthew Harris reminds us exactly of how it was recorded.

–

Marlene Gilson OAM (born Warnambool, 1944) lives and works in Gordon, Wadawurrung Country, Victoria. Selected solo exhibitions include Binbeal, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney, 2023; My Place – Before, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney, 2021; Marlene Gilson, Biennale of Australian Art, Art Gallery of Ballarat, 2018; What If, Koorie Heritage Trust, Naarm Melbourne, 2017; Guraham – King William – His Country, Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka, Ballarat, 2015; Wadawurrung – Past, Present & Future (with Deanne Gilson), Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Melbourne Museum, Naarm Melbourne, 2014; and Welcome to our Country (Ngardang baap yarrang) – Mother and Daughter – Wathaurung (Wadawurrung) Dreaming, Art Gallery of Ballarat, 2012. 
 
Selected group exhibitions include Wayngurrla – To Make Good, Barwon Park Mansion, Winchelsea, 2026; 60th Biennale di Venezia: Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, Venice, Italy, 2024; Wurrdha Marra, National Gallery of Victoria, Naarm Melbourne, 2023; For Our Elders, Eureka Centre, Ballarat, 2023; Australiana – Designing A Nation, Bendigo Art Gallery, 2023; Change the World, National Gallery of Victoria, Naarm Melbourne, 2022; Deadly Narratives, Koorie Heritage Trust, Naarm Melbourne, 2021; Colony: Frontier Wars, National Gallery of Victoria, Naarm Melbourne 2018; The National Picture: The Art of Tasmania’s Black War, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, and Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, 2018; 21st Biennale of Sydney: Superposition, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2018; Sovereignty, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Naarm Melbourne, 2016; and 10th Anniversary Victorian Indigenous Art Awards, Art Gallery of Ballarat, 2015.
 
Marlene Gilson OAM is represented by Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney.

– 

Matthew Harris (born Wangaratta, 1991) lives and works in Naarm Melbourne. Selected solo include Stilhed, Futures, Naarm Melbourne, 2026; Overland, Wangaratta Art Gallery, Wangaratta, 2025; Essential Oils (with Tyrone Te Waa), Toi Tauranga Art Gallery, New Zealand, 2025; Stone After Stone, Futures, Naarm Melbourne, 2024; Sky without Stars, The Commercial, Sydney, 2024; The British Museum, Futures, Naarm Melbourne, 2023; Panopticon, Conners Conners, Naarm Melbourne, 2022; Spiritual Poverty (with Sarah Brassier), Gertrude Glasshouse, Naarm Melbourne, 2023; Doom, Futures, Melbourne Art Fair, Naarm Melbourne, 2022; Goo, Futures, Naarm Melbourne, 2021; The Simple Life, Galerie Pompom, Sydney, 2021; and Hell, Neon Parc, Naarm Melbourne, 2018.
 
Selected group exhibitions include the 18th Lyon Biennale: Passer d'un rêve à l'autre / To pass from one dream to another, Lyon, France, 2026; 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Yield Strength, Art Gallery of South Australia and Samstag Museum of Art, Tarndanya Adelaide, 2026; All the World’s Memories, UNSW Galleries, Sydney, 2026; Unbecoming, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, 2025; Kisses, The Commercial, Sydney, 2024; 8th Yokohama Triennale: Wild Grass: Our Lives, Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, 2024; Between Waves, Australia Centre for Contemporary Art, Naarm Melbourne, 2023; Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Naarm Melbourne, 2022; and Choose Happiness, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021.
 
Matthew Harris was in the Gertrude Studio Program from 2020-2023.
 
Matthew Harris is represented by Futures, Naarm Melbourne; and The Commercial, Sydney.