Matthew Harris, With a Warm Embrace, 2023, recycled industrial felt, Wangaratta Woollen Mills acrylic yarn, gesso, acrylic paint, river stones, polyester filling, 2 objects, each 95 x 80 x 75 cm, TCG22955
(photo: Nick de Lorenzo) Wangaratta Art Gallery

With A Warm Embrace is based on stuffed koalas my nanna made out of the coat she was wearing when she met my grandfather. The original koalas are an inseparable pair. Though probably designed to be toys they’ve always been too special to play with and sit together in a cabinet as relics, now in my mother's house. Aside from ourselves and a few other bits and pieces the koalas are all we have left of my grandparents, they both died when I was little. Nanna worked at the Wangaratta Woollen Mills most of her life so the koalas are all sewn up with wool from that factory, in a shade of grey the factory conveniently titled 'Koala'. —Matthew Harris