John Greer (sculptor)

Last updated

John Greer
Born1944
Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada
Website www.artistjohngreer.com

John Greer RCA (born 1944) is a Canadian sculptor who likes to bring cultural and natural history together. [1] One critic calls him one of Canada's most philosophically minded artists. [1] He looks to ancient Celtic stones and Greek sculpture for inspiration. [2] Greer was the catalyst behind "Halifax Sculpture," a 1990s movement, rooted in minimalism and conceptualism. [3]

Contents

Life and work

Born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Greer studied Fine Art from 1962 to 1967 in Halifax at the Nova Scotia School of Art (1963-1964), at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts school (sculpture, 1966) and at the Vancouver School of Art (painting, 1967). [4] He has exhibited his work since 1967 extensively in Canada, USA, Korea and Europe. He taught sculpture at NSCAD University in Halifax for 26 years and is based in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, and Pietrasanta, Italy. [3] By the late 1980s, Greer adapted the stone carving process by applying conceptual and post-minimalist ideas to his art which inspired many young artists in the "Halifax Sculpture" movement. [5]

He views sculpture as his language and tries to engage the viewer in his work. [6] Greer has had the admiration of his artist-peers for many years, as the following quote from Ron Shuebrook, writing in 1987, suggests. [7]

...it is Greer's carved marble and cast bronze sculptures that confirm his place as one of the most compellingly thoughtful and accomplished sculptors at work in Canada.

His exhibits include:

Origins (1995), installed outside the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax Origins AGNS.jpg
Origins (1995), installed outside the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax

In 2009, he installed the piece Humble Ending in La Serpara, a sculpture garden North of Rome. He held the solo exhibition of APPRÉHENSION - APPREHENSION at Galerie Samuel Lallouz in Montreal, PQ in 2009. In 2011, his work The Sirens was permanently installed in a private park in Switzerland. The large-scale installation Cradle was completed in the spring of 2012 for the same private collection. In 2014, Greer co-founded “Intercontinental Sculpture Inc.”, in order to be able to handle more successfully the business part of creating art for the public domain. [6]

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia had a major travelling retrospective of Greer's work, retroActive, curated by David Diviney, which opened in 2015. A reviewer wrote that the real story of this exhibition was that Greer changed from being a sculptor whose work was based on theory to being one who was object-based. [9] In 2017, he installed The Rule of Law is a Reflection of Us All in the McMurtry Gardens of Justice in Toronto. [6] Also in 2017, he created the Canadian Building Trades Unions Monument, a collaboration with architect Brian MacKay-Lyons, for the Canadian Building Trades Unions which is now located in the collection of the National Capitol Collection in Ottawa. It won the "Award of Merit: Public Places and Civic Spaces" in the Urban Design Awards of the city of Ottawa. [6]

Greer is the recipient of numerous awards and grants; in 2009, he received one of the prestigious Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts in recognition of his lifetime achievement and significant contribution to contemporary Canadian visual art. He received the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award (1998) from the Canada Council for the Arts and first prize at the 1991 International Sculpture Symposium, "Matière à Musée" in Montreal. [3]

Greer was a founding member of one of Canada's first artist-run centres (Eyelevel Gallery), and is a long-term supporter of CARFAC (Canadian Artists' Representation/Le Front des artistes Canadiens). [3]

Honours

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NSCAD University</span> Public art school in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

NSCAD University, also known as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), is a public art university in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university is a co-educational institution that offers bachelor's and master's degrees. The university also provides continuing education services through its School of Extended Studies.

William Edward deGarthe (1907–1983) was a Finnish painter and sculptor who lived for much of his life in Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté</span>

Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté was a French Canadian painter and sculptor. He was one of the first native-born Canadian artists whose works were directly influenced by French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

Garry Neill Kennedy, was a Canadian conceptual artist and educator from Halifax, Nova Scotia. In the mid-1970s, he created works that investigated the processes and materials of painting. In the first decade of the 2000s, he expanded his work to investigate art and its social, institutional, and political framework.

Cliff Eyland was a Canadian painter, writer and curator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emanuel Hahn</span> German-Canadian sculptor (1881–1957)

Emanuel Otto Hahn was a German-born Canadian sculptor and coin designer. He taught and later married Elizabeth Wyn Wood. He co-founded and was the first president of the Sculptors' Society of Canada.

John Hooper, was an English-born Canadian sculptor known for his colourful polychromed wood carvings. His works can be found on public display in many locations throughout Canada and worldwide.

Michael Fernandes is a Canadian experimental artist and art educator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His work uses familiar, even banal materials to ask the viewer to confront the boundary between daily life and art.

Ron Shuebrook is an American-born Canadian abstract artist living in Guelph, Ontario. He is a prominent teacher and administrator, as well as a writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol Hoorn Fraser</span> American-born Canadian artist (1930–1991)

Carol Hoorn Fraser (1930–1991) was an American-born figurative artist who worked for thirty years in Nova Scotia, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canadian art</span> Canadian art

Canadian art refers to the visual as well as plastic arts originating from the geographical area of contemporary Canada. Art in Canada is marked by thousands of years of habitation by Indigenous peoples followed by waves of immigration which included artists of European origins and subsequently by artists with heritage from countries all around the world. The nature of Canadian art reflects these diverse origins, as artists have taken their traditions and adapted these influences to reflect the reality of their lives in Canada.

Bill Vazan is a Canadian artist, known for land art, sculpture, painting and photography. His work has been exhibited in North America and internationally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Jackson (artist)</span> American-Canadian artist (1924–2004)

Sarah Jeanette Jackson, was an American-Canadian artist. Jackson first became known for her sculptures and drawings, and then for her photocopy and digital art. She was an early user of the photocopier to make art, and used this practice to embrace mail art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hamilton MacCarthy</span> Canadian sculptor (1846–1939)

Hamilton Thomas Carlton Plantagenet MacCarthy was one of the earliest masters of monumental bronze sculpture in Canada. He is known for his historical sculptures, in particular his Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia (1904) as well as Samuel de Champlain overlooking Parliament Hill on Nepean Point, Ottawa (1915), next to the National Gallery of Canada. His monument to the Ottawa volunteers who died in the South African War (1902) was moved to Confederation Park in 1969 after several moves. Other works include that of Ottawa mayor, Samuel Bingham, in Notre-Dame Cemetery in Vanier.

Ursula Johnson is a multidisciplinary Mi’kmaq artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her work combines the Mi’kmaq tradition of basket weaving with sculpture, installation, and performance art. In all its manifestations her work operates as didactic intervention, seeking to both confront and educate her viewers about issues of identity, colonial history, tradition, and cultural practice. In 2017, she won the Sobey Art Award.

Victor Cicansky, is a Canadian sculptor known for his witty narrative ceramics and bronze fruits and vegetables. A founder of the Regina Clay Movement, Cicansky combined a "wry sense of style" with a postmodern "aesthetic based on place and personal experience". In recognition of his work, Cicansky was appointed member of the Order of Canada (2009) and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit (1997), and was awarded the Saskatchewan Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts (2012), the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012), as well as the Victoria and Albert Award for Ceramic Sculpture. His work is found in the National Gallery of Canada, Gardiner Museum, Burlington Art Centre, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (Japan).

Anne Ramsden is a Canadian artist who has exhibited widely in Canada. She currently lives and works on Gabriola Island, British Columbia on the traditional and unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation.

Mary Marguerite Porter Zwicker was a Canadian artist and art promoter from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Known for her watercolor paintings of landscapes and villages in Nova Scotia, Zwicker exhibited her work at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, the Montreal Art Association, and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Together with her husband, Leroy Zwicker, she owned and operated Zwicker's Gallery; for most of the 20th century, Zwicker's Gallery was the only Halifax gallery that routinely held art exhibits open to the public. It still operates.

Douglas Bentham has been since the late 1960s, acknowledged as one of Canada's pre-eminent producer of large-scale welded steel sculpture.


Miya Turnbull is an artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is of Japanese and Canadian ancestry and uses this to explore her identity in her work. Her work consists of photography, video, projection, and masks. Miya has had several installations around Canada and internationally. Miya's mask work has been inspired by quotes from Joseph Campbell and Andre Berthiaume.

References

  1. 1 2 Tippett 2017, p. 226.
  2. ↑ Tippett 2017, p. 225.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "John Greer". www.gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  4. ↑ Reid, Dennis (2012). A Concise History of Canadian Painting (Third ed.). Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press. p. 345. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  5. 1 2 3 Cronin, Ray (2023). Halifax Art & Artists: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Art Canada Institute. ISBN   978-1-4871-0315-6.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "The Rule of Law is a Reflection of Us All - by John Greer". mcmurtrygardensofjustice.com. McMurtry Gardens of Justice. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  7. ↑ Shuebrook, Ron (September–October 1987). "John Greer-Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax, 1987". Vanguard. 16 (4). Archived from the original on 12 October 2013. Retrieved 5 October 2013.
  8. ↑ John Greer, Thomas Seawell Exhibit at Brookhaven Archived 2008-05-17 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ Hammock, Virgil (3 October 2015). "John Greer Goes retroActive". viedesarts.com. Vie des arts, Automne 2015. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  10. ↑ "Prizes". Canada Council. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
  11. ↑ "Members since 1880". Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on 26 May 2011. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  12. ↑ "2009 Winners". Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 31 May 2016.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.