New Work by Michael Greaves

Michael Greaves: I Suddenly Remembered My Grandmothers' Words

Born in 1976 and a native of Dunedin, Michael Greaves exhibited a facility for drawing and painting while still an adolescent, which garnered him attention, praise and even sales. While this early initiation undoubtedly fuelled his desire to become an artist, much of his subsequent work as a painter over the past twenty years has revolved around exploring what painting might be once it throws off the burden of representing reality in accordance with what and how we see. In a 2012 essay,

Greaves wrote: 'For me, this "window to the world" idea of painting, a mode so similar to the ubiquitous photograph, does not accurately present the position that painting occupies, although it was the pathway and the projected road to a successful painting promoted during my early years, emphasising correctness to the representation of sight.’ In the works included in his solo exhibition with RDS Gallery, which runs 13 November–12 December, Greaves has pushed this process of reflection and enquiry still further, largely omitting any suggestion of representation as a literal transcription of a visually perceived object. Instead, he has allowed the formal properties of the work (shape, colour, line, texture, etc.), in combination with titles that are designed to trigger reflective speculation on the part of the viewer, to convey his sense of the ‘more’ that resides beyond the constraints of figuration as ‘representation’, both on the part of the artist who creates the painting, and the viewer who looks at it.

Greaves currently holds the position of Senior Lecturer in Painting, Dunedin School of Art, Otago Polytechnic, where he has taught for the past fifteen years. He holds a Bachelor of Art (Painting) and Master of Fine Arts from the Dunedin School of Art, Otago Polytechnic, as well as a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Art History and Theory, and a Bachelor of Education (Secondary) from the University of Otago.