Historical information

Newell Harry is an Australian-born artist of South African and Mauritian descent. Harry’s work often references the cultural agitation brought about by colonial migration and the associated complexity of identity, nomadism, dislocation and myths.

Untitled (gift mat #XIX) (Cape Flat / Kape Shack) is part of a series of gift mats that Harry has created in collaboration with weavers from the Vanuatu island of Mataso since 2007.

Untitled (gift mat #XIX) (Cape Flat / Kape Shack) is a contemporary work of art that takes the form of a woven ‘gift mat’ - an example of material culture of Vanuatu. Conceptually and visually significant to all of Harry’s gift mats is the use of text, which in the case of this work refers to Cape Flats - an area of Cape Town, South Africa, that was designated for settlement by ‘non-Whites’ in the late 1950s under the South African Apartheid system. Newell’s gift mats generally merge the material culture of Vanuatu and the Afrikaans language of South Africa and present it in a Western contemporary art forum. But ‘Untitled (gift mat #XIX) (Cape Flat / Kape Shack)’ also invites an interpretation of the words ‘flat’ and ‘shack’ with reference to an Australian usage. The object represents a mix of the artist’s familial and experiential influences that relate to his mother’s homeland, South Africa; the country of his birth and upbringing, Australia; and his place of creative retreat, Vanuatu.