Malcolm Harrison

Malcolm Harrison was one of New Zealand's foremost fabric artists, working both in construction and stitching modes, until his death in 2007. A Waiheke resident, Malcolm was probably lesser known on the island than he deserved to be, partly due to his preference for privacy.

He was best known for major commissions such as the BNZ Tower in Queen Street, the North Shore City Council's building and a large, collaborative work at Parliament House in Wellington. This latter work, completed in 1996, employed a combination of Maori raranga (weaving) and European traditional embroidery. The work also used 700 members of the Embroiderers' Guild.

In 2004 he was awarded Creative New Zealand's inaugural $65,000 Craft/Object Art Fellowship to support his modern-day reinterpretation of Goya's work The Sleep of Reason.

An obituary written by fellow Waiheke artists and published in Gulf News can be read here.