CURATOR Robert Heald ORGANISER Artspace, Auckland OTHER VENUES Artspace, 20 November–19 December 2002; Dunedin Public Art Gallery (dates?) PUBLICATION Essays Robert Heald, Justin Paton

Michael Harrison is known for his small, old-fashioned, wishy-washy watercolours, featuring images of boys and girls, cats and birds. The Auckland painter conjures with dreamy archetypes, symbolist scenarios, and tarot-inspired allegories. His longing, loving views are often tinged with melancholy, perhaps regret. They can be gentle—in the catalogue, Justin Paton writes, ‘Harrison’s works on paper look so faint and thin-skinned that you fear for their survival.’—yet pack a psychological punch. Love in the Shadows brings together over forty works made since the mid-1980s, to provide an entrée into Harrison’s strange, enclosed, lyrical world.