Untitled (Black Sabbath and other Anecdotes)

Breaking with the idea of a coherent historical narrative and linear chronology, the black-and-white photographic series Untitled (Black Sabbath and other Anecdotes) unfolds as “an expanded form of notebook,” as the artist defines it. It consists of loose personal associations and intellectual interests Harry has traced between images and hand-typed texts that often don’t share a direct relationship. The photographs were taken in Vanuatu in the South Pacific, capturing casual moments during private gatherings with friends, in the streets of Port Vila, or during occasional trips to nearby islands. The anecdotal mode of storytelling in this connection furthers Harry’s effort to invoke new ways of understanding hybrid postcolonial narratives. What emerges from this process is a fragmented collection of observational gestures and moments, gathered not through conscious effort and brought through the act of storytelling. Narratives drawn from pocket-size notebooks and images of everyday banal gestures inform this work. Harry asks: “How might this collection of fragmentary moments and notes be given more substantive form and structure—if they need any at all—and what forms or methods might be used as devices to anchor (without restricting) the ethereal nature of such ephemeral moments?”

Text written on the occasion of the exhibition Remedios at C3A Centro de Creación Comtemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba, 2023-2024.