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Overview
This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).
The macabre portraits and murky landscapes of printmaker Jason Greig probe and investigate the nature of human psychology. Greig’s practice is imbued with mystery, apparitions and otherworldly beings, subjects for which printmaking seems an appropriate medium. Indeed, many famous practitioners in the field, from Jacques Callot to Francisco de Goya to Edvard Munch, explore in their prints humanity’s more disturbing depths, and display a fascination with allegorical subjects and melodrama. Greig, who is steeped in this tradition, says his choice of subject matter is ‘totally indulgent’: ‘I’m making images which I really want to see. I’m entertaining myself.’1
Greig’s preferred medium is the monoprint, which he describes as ‘a real combination of painting and drawing’.2 Much printmaking revels in the possibility of reproduction, but the monoprint, as the name suggests, is unique, a one-off. Greig uses this to his advantage — instead of creating a series of editions, he carries his motifs from work to work, through a shifting landscape of mood and setting.
Greig produced the ‘Phaedra chain’ series of monoprints in 2011. Despite the title’s nod towards the Phaedra of Greek mythology, the works have a distinctly Victorian aesthetic, depicting angel and demon figures and apparitions set against bright, hellish backgrounds. In this work colour is absent and the brightness emanates from the figure herself: the ghostly white of her dress, the eerie light brushing her cheek. Here Greig’s literary, pop cultural, art historical and personal influences swirl together like the misty ground that surrounds the figure — think Wilkie Collins’ woman in white meeting a contemporary Japanese horror ghoul — as she quietly smoulders, zombie-like and menacing.
This is a work of contradictions. The figure’s ethereal beauty is at odds with her brooding ugliness, evocative of that famous dual character of gothic literature, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Is she evil or outcast? Human or monster? Whatever the answer, she is captured here by Greig frozen in time yet strangely timeless, her level stare unyielding and reaching into our souls.
Lizzie Baikie
1 Jason Greig, quoted in Robin Neate, ‘King ink’, Art New Zealand, no. 111, Winter 2004, p. 78.
2 Ibid., p. 76.