JASON GREIG

Born 1963 in Timaru, New Zealand. Lives and works in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Jason Greig, Bed head, 2007, monoprint, 26 x 34 cm image; 37.5 x 46 cm framed. Courtesy Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney and Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington. Photograph: Greg Weight

Jason Greig is one of New Zealand’s most significant contemporary printmakers. He studied printmaking at the Canterbury School of Fine Arts, New Zealand, graduating with Honours in engraving. Today, he works out of his studio in the port town of Lyttelton, Christchurch, teaches printmaking to art students, and exhibits his works extensively throughout New Zealand and abroad.

Monoprints are the most ‘painterly’ method of printmaking, involving both drawing and painting on the plate. Previously working with lithography and etching, Greig first used monoprint in 1993. He soon began to push the medium, running a single print through the press multiple times in order to achieve an optimum tonal depth of black or colour. The result is an intense and foreboding range of works that have allowed him to explore the darker depths of his imagination.

Greig draws inspiration from both traditional and contemporary sources. He admires master printmakers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Piranesi, Goya, Legros, Charles Méryon), the French Symbolists (Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau), writers of Gothic literature (Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Shelley), classic horror films (Eraserhead), and contemporary doom and operatic metal music (Black Sabbath). His gothic sensibility is also injected with humour; his prints gently mock Hollywood film stars, twentieth-century art and rock music.

Focusing on seascapes, landscapes and figure studies, Greig’s subject matter spans old Viking ships, tumultuous seas, decaying figures of authority and winged mythological creatures, set against Victorian, doomsday imagery. The Latter Day Saint (1994) is a romanticised self-portrait, showing the artist wandering alone amidst a dreary landscape – emblematic of the treacherous artistic terrain that Greig prowls. His figure studies are particularly arresting: male figures are presented as brutal, decaying and menacing (Homer, 2006); female figures are a study of the temptress, both otherworldly and dangerous (Entity in Flesh, 2002). Greig’s work offers a grim modern-day commentary on the dark under-belly of the human psyche.

In 2006, Greig exhibited 34 monoprints and three charcoal studies as part of an inconclusive study of 13 years of work, entitled ‘The Devil Made Me Do It’. He plays in the Christchurch-based metal band Into the Void alongside fellow artists Ronnie van Hout, Mark Whyte and sound artists Paul Sutherland, Dave Imlay and James Greig.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2009 ‘Rockumental’, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
2008 ‘Sabotage’, Brett McDowell Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand
2008 ‘Argus’, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia
2007 ‘The Judas Kiss’, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand
2006 ‘The Devil made me do it’, Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

Selected Group Exhibitions

2008 ‘Neo Goth: Back in black’, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, Australia
2004 ‘Coming Home in the Dark’, Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand
1995 ‘Hangover’, Dunedin Public Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand (travelling exhibition)
1996 ‘Opening exhibition’, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand
1994 ‘Blue Blood’, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand

Selected Bibliography

Gerald Barnett, ‘Jason Greig’, The Real Art Roadshow: The Book, Real Art Charitable Trust, New Zealand, 2009, p. 17
Ashley Crawford, ‘On the dark side’, The Age, 30 July 2008, p. 16
Heather Galbraith, ‘Master of Reality’, Telecom Prospect New Art New Zealand, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, 2007
Louise Greig, ‘Haunted: Louise Greig talks with Jason Greig’, Hangover, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Waikato Museum of Art and History, 1995, pp. 27–28
Peter Vangioni, The Devil made me do it, exhibition catalogue, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Christchurch, 2006