Piers Greville / Artist
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2023
Objects In The Mirror
Magma Galleries, Collingwood. 7th—29th October 2023Landscape and it’s identity is a loaded question anywhere on the Australian continent, but the particular site of the middle Snowy River in Ngarigu county, carries the weight of an ongoing identity crisis. It is through the tumult of indigenous history, settler narratives and contemporary climate events which these paintings interrogate.
The paintings employ a particular literal lens and geometry, a parallel perspective without a vanishing point or horizon - objects in the mirror. They give a similar effect of flattened perspective to that found in certain medieval paintings as well as electron microscopy and interstellar telescopy. As if viewing the landscape from outer space, this view is seen as an explosion of a single point of view, and so of the ego. Stemming from a prior fascination with depicting projected narratives into a landscape these paintings illustrate the possibility of multiple states. To invert the truth, to strip the adornment of identity, and to do all this in retrospect is all that’s left to do.
Pardon
2023
2023
oil on linen,
90 x 122 cm
90 x 122 cm
Recess
2023
2023
oil on linen,
90 x 122 cm
90 x 122 cm
2023
Blue World: The Valerie Taylor Art Prize for Ocean Advocacy
A new work has been selected to this invitation-only prize. Datum Gelidae, 2019–2023 is a newly finished painting. The title comes from ‘given the cold’ translated into latin, and refers to the now dynamic state of what might have once been looked upon as static geography. It is a painting of the Antarctic polar ice thickness, using a 2019 dataset measured by the CryoSat and ICESat-2 satellites. Stretched over three panels, it depicts our massive but vulnerable southern icecap. The irregular terrain depicted in the painting reflects both the sub-glacial terrain, but also reveals glacial accumulation and depletion across the continent. The painting’s support is a particularly delicate and raw linen, which like the sea around the Antarctic, is deep, dark and vulnerable, and which absorbs the light of all around.Datum Gelidæ
2023
2023
oil on linen,
270 x 122 cm
270 x 122 cm
2022
Manifesta14 Prishtina, Kosovo
“Greville’s What Is Here, 2022, is a bridge embodied by the people themselves. Installing a frame in the middle of the river, the artist invites citizens from both sides of the city to swim in a relay of solidarity, together against the current. Meanwhile the action is watched over by two flags which present renderings of the surrounding terrain but claim no territory”What Is Here
2022
2022
Mitrovica and Prishtina,
Kosovo.
Kosovo.
Photographs by Marcello Maranzan and Alban Nuhiu, 2022
2022
Water[Shed] at Bett Gallery in Hobart,
From the Bett Gallery Website: 50 Artists. 50 Years.water[shed] is an exhibition conceived by OUTSIDE THE BOX / Earth Arts Rights and presented in collaboration with Bett Gallery to support the Restore Pedder campaign.
The staging of the water[shed] from 18 February – 12 March 2022 coincides with the 50th anniversary of the last heart-breaking summer in 1972 when dams on the Huon and Serpentine Rivers were closed and the impounded waters began to rise. Lake Pedder along with over 242 square kilometres of wild landscape in the heart of lutruwita (Tasmania) was swallowed up. The original lake is not forgotten.
This 50-year anniversary of loss also coincides with the first year of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030. Water[shed] brings together 50 Australian and international artists exploring the ideas of ecosystem restoration, re-wilding grief, loss and celebration of the original Lake Pedder.
Hypolimnus Pedderensis
2021
2021
oil on linen,
107 x 91.5 cm
107 x 91.5 cm
Hypolimnus Pedderensis, 2021
A profound feeling of loss echoes in the black void of Pedder Dam. After a visit there in 2021, I tried to find out what I could about the webs of life shattered and gone from this place. Taking particular interest in the extinct Lake Pedder earthworm Hypolimnus pedderensis, I read that only a single specimen was ever collected, the summer before the lake was consumed. We can only presume that when the lake flooded that winter, the last of the species were drowned. That was June 1972, the same month I was born.
In the absence of images of the worm online, I returned to Lutruwita/Tasmania in May to witness the lone specimen with my own eyes, suspended in ethanol in the bowels of a museum. As I studied this tiny deceased body, capturing images and drawings, I had in mind certain late paintings of Caravaggio, shortly before his death: his depiction of the quest for empirical, visceral knowledge in The Incredulity of Saint Thomas; and the The Raising of Lazarus, with not only its analogous narrative, but the corporeal frailty with its golden shimmering skin.
“The Lake the Vanished...”
ABC radio national (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)Listen to the interview with Julie Gough, David Keeling and Danielle Wood, aired on Wednesday 17 August 2022
@ 1:22 — 29:45
2022
Holiday In Heterotopia
an exhibition of new paintings, at Dominik Mersch GalleryA state of recursive, self-cancelling desire. This suite of paintings are after a place called Kunama Namadgi also known as Kosciusko, in the Australian High Country. Terrains and artefacts are represented as sculpted forms, within the field of romantic landscape views. These works question the place of settler narratives and other colonising forces in the landscape. They are pictures fuelled by the demise of a landscape, due to the objectifying and mythologising gaze it is subject to.
The title: Holiday In Heterotopia alludes to a methodology of ‘thinking through sculpture’ which has led these paintings. In representing these sculptural forms in the medium of painting I suspend them as an ‘other’ place in relation to their field, a Heterotopia.
Recursion, See Recursion
2022
2022
oil on linen,
182 x 122 cm
182 x 122 cm
2021–2022
The Art of Protest, Newcastle Art Gallery
From 30th of October 2021 until 30th of January 2022, Phase Space Green, 2020 will be included in this exhibition, curated by Lisa Kirkpatrick at the Newcastle Art Gallery. The exhibition surveys a history of artwork produced in protest from Australia.
From the Newcastle Art Gallery website:
From community activism to global social movements, THE ART OF PROTEST features politically engaged artists past and present responding to disaster and injustice and calling for change.
This exhibition surveys over 100 years of resistance, with new artists taking up the fight each decade. From worker’s rights, feminism, HIV/AIDS awareness, advocacy and compassion for all Australians, calls for environmental policy or the preservation of local heritage, through to the events of the past few tumultuous years - the COVID-19 pandemic, the apocalyptic bushfires of 2020 and an urgent need for action on climate change.
Ann Newmarch’s screenprints of the 70s and 80s employ the graphic nature of the poster format to challenge traditional notions of art and gender roles whilst Tina Havelock Stevens’ performance video The Breakwater 2018 set in Newcastle, documents one of the earliest instances of community activism in Australia.
Noel Counihan shines a light on the working conditions of miners juxtaposed against Simryn Gill’s photography that reveals the enormous impact an open cut mine has on the landscape. Deborah Kelly’s Coal is Over 2019 installation and homage to Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s 1969 peace campaign offers a reminder that alternative energy solutions are here and available (if we want it).
Dani Marti's soft sculpture installation Orifices was created during a residency with the Galley of Modern Art, Glasgow and part of a body of work aimed at reducing social exclusion, homophobia and HIV related stigma. The decision by Glasgow City Council to censor parts of the exhibition led the artist to instead undertake the guerrilla action of installing islands of blood red scourers throughout the city, not allowing already marginalised individuals and communities be hidden away and silenced.
From community activism to global social movements, THE ART OF PROTEST features politically engaged artists past and present responding to disaster and injustice and calling for change.
This exhibition surveys over 100 years of resistance, with new artists taking up the fight each decade. From worker’s rights, feminism, HIV/AIDS awareness, advocacy and compassion for all Australians, calls for environmental policy or the preservation of local heritage, through to the events of the past few tumultuous years - the COVID-19 pandemic, the apocalyptic bushfires of 2020 and an urgent need for action on climate change.
Ann Newmarch’s screenprints of the 70s and 80s employ the graphic nature of the poster format to challenge traditional notions of art and gender roles whilst Tina Havelock Stevens’ performance video The Breakwater 2018 set in Newcastle, documents one of the earliest instances of community activism in Australia.
Noel Counihan shines a light on the working conditions of miners juxtaposed against Simryn Gill’s photography that reveals the enormous impact an open cut mine has on the landscape. Deborah Kelly’s Coal is Over 2019 installation and homage to Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s 1969 peace campaign offers a reminder that alternative energy solutions are here and available (if we want it).
Dani Marti's soft sculpture installation Orifices was created during a residency with the Galley of Modern Art, Glasgow and part of a body of work aimed at reducing social exclusion, homophobia and HIV related stigma. The decision by Glasgow City Council to censor parts of the exhibition led the artist to instead undertake the guerrilla action of installing islands of blood red scourers throughout the city, not allowing already marginalised individuals and communities be hidden away and silenced.
Peter Drew and Alex Seton illustrate the continuing plight of refugees and asylum seekers through the guerrilla art of poster pasteups and carving of these stories into ancient marble. Piers Greville and Fiona Lee employ charcoal, ash and salvaged materials from the 2019/2020 bushfires as their medium, presenting a bleak reality, not of our future but our present.
Maddison Gibbs skilfully combines traditional cultural practices and contemporary methods to illuminate underrepresented voices. Her sculpted fern spirit I Can’t Breathe 2021 is a simultaneous call from Aboriginal people and the environment. Joseph McGlennon and Anne Zahalka’s photographic re-creations preserve native fauna in their environment, comparing our past and present to question what will be left in our future.
THE ART OF PROTEST brings together local, national and international artists, newly acquired works and highlights from Newcastle Art Gallery's collection to explore how far we've come and how far we still have to go.
Exhibiting artists include: Tony ALBERT, Micky ALLAN, Glenn BARKLEY, Joseph BEUYS, Penny BYRNE, Kevin CONNOR, Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Noel COUNIHAN, Juan DAVILA, Peter DREW, Tina FIVEASH, Honor FREEMAN, Maddison GIBBS, Simryn GILL, Piers GREVILLE, Vicki HAMILTON, Tina HAVELOCK STEVENS, Judy HEPPER, Kazutaka KANEGAE, Deborah KELLY, Therese KENYON, Rosemary LAING, Fiona LEE, Dani MARTI, Mandy MARTIN, Joseph McGLENNON, Marie McMAHON, Sally MORGAN, Ann NEWMARCH, Ken O'REGAN, Baden PAILTHORPE, Luke ROBERTS, Alex SETON, Richard TIPPING, Vicki VARVARESSOS, Gerry WEDD, Jemima WYMAN and Anne ZAHALKA.
Phase Space Green
2022
2022
oil on linen,
200 x 140 cm
200 x 140 cm
2020
Tipping Point at Dominik Mersch Gallery
May 15-31 2020,
First solo show with Dominik Mersch Gallery in Sydney. The paintings continued ongoing research into landscape and mapping and seek to capture this seismic moment in collective awareness of our place in the environment. SEE EXHIBITION >>2020
Isolation at Box Gallery
On the 1st of April 2020, an exhibition of new paintings for 2020 launched to an empty room. In response to Covid-19, Isolation was a closed-door installation generating online image and video of the work along with artist interviews via social media. The exhibition placed paintings in a context of the human figuration, installed in a space which would usually host live model sittings. SEE EXHIBITION >>
Installation view
Photograph by Dan Preston
April 2020
April 2020