Press article:
Praise for Pedder study
Mercury - Saturday, 9 Mar 2019 - Page 7
( link to article ) THE emerging artist awarded the coveted Glover Prize for 2019 hopes his winning entry provokes thoughts about humans’ relationship with an increasingly fragile environment.
Melbourne’s Piers Greville was inspired to create his piece, Pedder Prime Cuts, during a kayaking trip to the “politically charged space” of Lake Pedder in 2017.
Once a glacial outwash, the lake has been flooded since the early 1970s by huge dams built to generate hydroelectricity.
“I think we need to collectively think of the environment differently than we have in the past. Even those who admire it and rightly see it as a thing of beauty,” Greville said.
“I think we need to see ourselves as more implicated in the environment.”
Greville was already on a high before claiming the Glover Prize — the prestigious annual award for the best depiction of a Tasmanian landscape — because it was the first time he had been accepted as a finalist in a major art prize.
He only recently completed his thesis for a masters of fine art at the Victorian College of the Arts, which he described as a study of “the natural versus the artificial — the end of nature as it were” .
Greville said the $50,000 cash prize would help him pursue his career as an artist.
Head judge Barry Keldoulis said many entries showed concern for the Tasmanian environment.