Piers Greville

Piers Greville is a Melbourne-based artist working predominantly with the medium of painting to investigate our dwindling natural ecologies and their intersection with the human-built world. While his work aims to interrogate more than instruct, the personal and political stance of the artist are always in play. Greville combines traditions of the Sublime — where mountainous terrains are painted with arresting precision in oils and watercolour — with a contemporary outlook on the way that we segment Australian landscapes. This outlook informs his use of monochromatic colours, concrete board and a dislocated view akin to digital mapping. His compositional choice to slice up the landscape refers to the way we re-direct waterways and hem in national parks. All of this imagery is informed by Piers’ extensive walks through these parks and reserves, resulting in a landscape that is both surreal and very real in its connection to the climate crisis.

Greville’s art career developed later in life, but his keen awareness of our changing global climate has been nurtured since childhood. His concerns were fortified in the alpine regions of the world, following the winters from northern to southern hemispheres as a competitor in cross country skiing competitions. Greville began artistic collaborations and exhibitions in Sydney and Berlin, where he was invited to explore environmental themes in shows including Histories Collapse (2009), Precipitate (2010) and A Perfect Day to Chase Tornadoes (2010). He embarked on full-time painting in Ironside Studios in 2016 and in 2018 he completed a Masters of Fine Art with first class honours. His thesis, titled Fabricated Country: re-imagining landscape focussed on the evolving ways that art can facilitate urgent investigations into this changing environment. At the final Masters exhibition Greville won two awards, one granting him an exhibition at Dominik Mersch Gallery in Sydney. In 2019, Greville won the prestigious Glover prize for painting.

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