A virtuoso of printmaking, Jason Greig’s practice is anchored in a history of contemporary and historical European art that particularly acknowledges his respect for the work of Francisco Goya, Charles Meryon and Gothic art, also singling out the important influence of French Symbolist artist, Odilon Redon (1840–1916).

Born in Timaru in 1963, Greig graduated from the University of Canterbury in 1985 with a Diploma of Fine Arts (Honours) in Engraving, tutored as a student by masterful printmakers, Denise Copland and Barry Cleavin. Senior Lecturer in printmaking at Canterbury from 1978 to 1990, Cleavin is widely acknowledged for an arts practice that “exposes the gap between appearance and reality,” raising questions about the rationality of human behaviour. Greig’s art similarly raises questions about the subtle and complex nature of our ideologies and actions. Indeed, Greig’s presence in Australia and New Zealand sees his work held in many public collections in art galleries that include Te Papa Wellington, the Hocken Library in Dunedin, the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and Aiganti ghe Art Gallery in Timaru.

This current survey exhibition at LEstrange Gallery encompasses three decades of Greig in forty works dating from a monoprint, Tombs in 1996 to Lavadia in 2019, measuring the wider reach of Greig’s practice in paintings, monoprints, wood-block prints and etchings. As printmaker, the subjects of Greig’s art have often been characterised by their historical references to medieval art, 19th century romanticism and the heavy-metal music of Black Sabbath. An association formed with artists that he shared space with at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts led to the “legendary” band, Into the Void. Greig’s sharing the stage with other students from his time at University; Paul Sutherland, Ronnie van Hout, Mark Whyte and Dave Imlay.

Greig’s Laquadia II is an “oil on paper work”, the figure in this landscape, confronting in its stance, clarifying that it touches on an indeterminate relationship between place and belonging. Certainly, there is both a feeling of trespassing into an unknown Jason Greig Survey Exhibition domain and the possibilities of menacing creatures, hybrid or part animal, part human, as imaginative as they are tangi-ble. Laquadia II is an authoritative work, commanding in its presence and the evocative world that it defines.

As an artist who, over more than four decades, has alluded to and defined the dark and seemingly unknowable nature of human behaviour, Greig is an artist widely acknowledged for his practice and status as an influential figure in the history of the visual arts and printmaking in Aotearoa New Zealand. Prominent arts commentator and writer, Andrew Paul Wood describes Greig as an artist with a “Black sense of humour and rock and roll sensibility, and a virtuoso of the printmaker’s technique and consummate artist...” Moreover, Head of Curatorial and Exhibitions at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Sarah Farrar, commenting on Greig’s practice in 2012, stated that his prints and paintings “contain a bewildering amalgam of literary, musical and historical references... often alluded to in his titles.”

Confirmation of the impressive reach of his practice across numerous traditions of printmaking and painting as central to the heart of Greig’s practice have also been highlighted by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū’s curator, Peter Vangioni, singling out Greig’s authority as printmaker and painter, and of central interest to his practice is his commitment to monoprints as a commanding alternative to the “technically challenging printmaking processes of etching and lithography”. Moreover, Vangioni has further publicly emphasised Greig's impressive technical skill within his practice and the origins of its influence from his father. “[Greig] has always admired the draftsmanship of his father, an engineer and surveyor by profession... [and] a technical virtuoso himself.”

Jason Greig Survey Exhibition

Lestrange Gallery

372A Ferry Road, Christchurch

Tues – Fri 11.00 – 17.00, and Sat – Sun, 11.00 – 16.00

Exhibition open from 2 nd March – 30 th April 2025