Piers Greville 'Siren Song Creek'
Piers Greville is a Melbourne-based artist working predominantly with the medium of painting, using both historical and contemporary visual means to examine how we think of our environment. This stems from a deeply personal enquiry of his urban existence and our dwindling ecologies. As the recipient of the DMG/VCA Award 2018, Greville realised a solo show at Dominik Mersch Gallery titled 'Siren Song Creek'. Read his artist statement below.
‘Siren song creek (Cadaver IV)’, 2019, oil and wax on linen, diptych, overall 180 x 120cm
‘Siren Song Creek’ focuses mostly on Australian regional terrains and those that have been experienced by the artist through the act of walking. The terrains isolated in these paintings represent the idea of nature, either as an icon of it or literally as a nature reserve. Yet they also reflect in their stories constructed qualities, each somehow a product of fabrication. This transition between lost ideals of nature and new constructed realities creates the melancholy void that Siren Song Creek runs down.
‘Flay (Cadaver III)’, 2019, oil and wax on concrete board, 182 x 123cm framed
‘Tower Hill Object’, 2019, oil, acrylic and wax on board, 125 x 95cm framed
The landscape elements in the paintings employ a range of modes of reference, from plein air record, archival photography and historical paintings, to locating viewpoints using google street view and other online mapping data and traditional topographic maps. In using these means, I seek to deliberately view through contemporary visual prisms, while positioning these in relation to historical modes.
Piers Greville, 2019
'Siren Song Creek' installation view; from left to right, 'Taranaki Object', suspended sculptures 'Outrigger' and 'Raft', and 'Oeschinensee Object’.
Greville was selected as the winner of the 2018 DMG/VCA Award for his compelling examination of our environment through a deeply personal enquiry into urban existence and dwindling ecologies. The DMG / VCA Award is an annual award in collaboration with the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in Melbourne, which sees DMG provide the winning artist from the VCA Masters' program with a solo exhibition at the gallery.
‘Oeschinensee Object’, 2018, oil, acrylic and wax on board, 125 x 95cm framed
'Siren Song Creek' installation view
‘Taranaki Object’, 2019, oil, acrylic and wax on board, 125 x 95cm framed
