Guest Artist this month…
Since June 2008 Emerson’s has been supporting local artists with a guest artist space in the area adjoining the brewery shop. The artwork changes each month and this months artist is Michel Greaves.
Michel is Head of the Painting Department at the School of Art Otago Polytechnic Dunedin. He has work held in private and public collections in the UK, Germany, U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand.
“Things done in the dark will be brought to the light”.
"This work is the first in a new group of works for an upcoming show in October/November 2009. The painting is a further departure from things that I have been making in the last 5 years although the motivation remains the same.
With this work I am consciously thinking about luxury, light, contemporary speculative culture and threat.
Things done in the dark will be brought to the light is a title lifted from a Johnny Cash song I first heard a number of years ago. This phrase, treaded into the belly of the song struck me as both threatening and closeted, we all have secrets and we all have things that are less than attractive. In painting a chandelier to explore these thoughts I have drawn attention to the liturgical history of light and the exuberance and luxury that lends experimentation in the excesses of the human condition. There is something both beautiful and inherently vulgar in the painting, a speculation on contemporary culture, and a threatening gesture".
Oil on Canvas 2009
149 x 127 cm
$2600.00