The private versus the public you. The debates about identity and privacy, about information and what role disclosure performs in a society where individuals can – through means such as Facebook – be truthful or inventive, famous or infamous and have every aspect of their lives available to anyone (who has access) have notionally altered the character and fundamental means of how people communicate today. Connections, relationships, social hierarchies’ are now being made by and with people who have never met. Previous cultural and social imperatives of how we communicate and why are being challenged by a generation raised on technology and who recognise and dance to different paradigms.

The contradictions and tensions of the public versus private circumstance underlie the numerous narratives in Duet. All of these works are self-portraits of the painter Rebecca Harris in various guises, disguises, attitudes and social circumstance. She has clothed herself in camouflage, hides behind a mask. Each of these beautiful paintings has substantive social and political dialogues, environmental discourse and reminds us again how accomplished and pertinent Rebecca Harris has become as she has transitioned from a ceramic and printmaking background to an artist producing paintings of real importance and substance. There are multiple debates about gaze, about hiding, about the history of art, about subterfuge, about exotic and endemic versus indigenous.