Grieve
The Other Side Exhibition Text - Jack Trodd
Welcoming the viewer to explore the dualistic expressions the artist finds within the natural world and humanities’ physical and metaphysical imprint upon it. The Other Side, is a series of new oil paintings, some involving a drawn figurative compositional charcoal underlayer, consider Grieve’s immersive relationship with, and memories of, landscapes within the British Isles, and their corruption and fragmentation over his lifetime. Grieve presents visible and non-visible networks of life which make up our natural reality. Two worlds; a surface landscape, and a distorted psychedelic network more closely connected to nature buried beneath the earth, blurring the line between the two. Grieve’s work visually connects opposites, merging the peace and fury of peaks and depths, mountains and oceans, foregrounds and horizons, and tangible and intangible currents, notable in the rhythmic oceans and skylines of his painting. The energy in Grieve’s painting comes from conflicts between representation and abstraction, reducing natural detail in certain paintings to better explore the sensations and feelings of landscapes, with sharper explorations of dark and light and fore and background shadowing to present depth, and display his extensive use of layering. This contrasts directly with his more representative, and novel, inclusion of manmade structures dwarfed by the warped perspective of the surrounding landscape. These figurative elements epitomise the relationship between the human reality of destruction and expansion, beneath the Earth’s ultimate power and deific grandeur. Grieves’ work pays no reverence to national borders or other socioeconomic constructs, instead offering painterly appreciation for the harmony and escape these landscapes offer, whilst highlighting their fragility. The paintings in this exhibition invite us to witness Grieve’s perceived realities of surreal, spiritual, and philosophical landscapes, homed in relatable environments. The Other Side sees Grieve’s understanding of the fragmentation of land grow and give him space to expand his practical techniques and subjective supernatural surrealities, to discover the other side. Jack Trodd | BWG Gallery Director
Using Natural Reality to Paint Supernatural Surrealities - Stephen Baycroft
The philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that the physical sensory organs of a human body unconsciously extracted ‘sensations’ from data in the sensory ‘impressions’ made on these organs by the ‘things-in-themselves’ which occupied a noumenal (i.e. supernatural, intelligible, metaphysical, spiritual) other-world that lay outside this body. According to Kant the human mind occupying this human body used these ‘sensations’ to unconsciously correlate an ordinary multisensory perception of the enformed and coloured ‘beings’ in a phenomenal (i.e. natural, sensible, physical, material) world; and then unconsciously projected this phenomenal world outward as a (truly subjective yet apparently objective) conscious experience which veiled the noumenal other-world from this mind. In Kantian philosophy a human mind therefore never experienced the reality of the noumenal other-world; but instead only the appearance called the phenomenal world which this mind correlated from data extracted about this other-world. The word ‘apocalypse’ means ‘to unveil’, and Kant rejected every apocalyptic attempt to unveil (and thus mystically experience) the noumenal other-world which lay beyond the phenomenal world. Many post-Kantian visual artists nevertheless tried to use their artworks to commemorate the results of ‘inner [worldly] apocalyptic’ expansions of the ‘sublime’ boundary limits of their ordinary multisensory perceptions of the phenomenal world to include previously uncorrelated sensory data. Such artists sought to correlate previously uncorrelated data they sensed using either the physical sensory organs of their bodies (as in the case of Robert Delaunay’s production of Orphic visual artworks after his physical eyes were temporarily blinded by dazzling sunlight); and/or the metaphysical sensory organs of their minds like the mind’s eye (as in the Symbolist and Surrealist production of visual artworks which were intended to be ‘outer material’ images that commemorated the ‘inner mental’ memory-images seen by these artists using their mind’s eyes). Joe Grieve’s painting practice may be compared to J.M.W Turner, Edvard Munch and Pablo Picasso’s paintings of supernatural surrealities, whose forms, colours and life were more real equivalents (i.e. analogical correspondents rather than mimetic representations) of those in the natural realities of these artists ordinary multisensory perceptions of the phenomenal world. A painting by Grieve may be attributed to the inner apocalyptic inclusion of previously uncorrelated data about ‘inner mental’ memory-images he perceived with his mind’s eye and the other metaphysical sensory organs of his mind, into his unconscious correlation of sensory data extracted by the physical sensory organs of his body into an extra-ordinary multisensory perception of a phenomenal world. Grieve then painted this extra-ordinary multisensory perception as a supernatural surreality whose forms, colours and life were more real than those in the natural reality of his ordinary multisensory perception. The supernatural surreality of Grieve’s paintings endowed them with a sublimity which was compatible with the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s belief that an artist could use the production of a sublime artwork, to ‘tame’ the ‘terrible’ experience he/she had previously suffered while using his/her ‘spiritualised [physical] eyes’ to mystically tear the veil called his/her ordinary multisensory perception of the phenomenal world; and thereby gaze into the abyss of the noumenal other-world which lay beyond this veil. Nietzsche’s aesthetics was a revaluation of the comparison made by the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, between an artist’s projection of his/her inner apocalyptic experience into a visual artwork, and a ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’ experience of nirvana. Schopenhauer argued that during such a mystical experience of nirvana an artist tore the veil called his/her ordinary multisensory perception of the phenomenal world of illusion (maya); and gazed into the reality of the previously noumenal, sacred, unknown and infinite abyss of thingness and nothingness, which lay beyond the phenomenal, profane, known and finite (spatial and temporal) horizons of this veil. A spectator’s inner apocalyptic experience of nirvanic immersion in the supernatural surreality of one of Grieve’s sublime paintings, allowed him/her to emulate artists like William Blake and Aldous Huxley, by passing through the multisensory doors (rather than purely optical windows) of his/her perception into a utopian/dystopian other-worldly place. A spectator may have an atmospheric and emotivating experience of this other-world as a (haunting, mysterious, enigmatic and horrific) specter of an ‘Outer [Worldly] Apocalyptic’ event, that was occurring outside his/her mind and body in a past/future time; and might herald his/her post-Apocalyptic experience either of regaining a lost Paradise, or of entering a new Paradise. Text © Stephen Baycroft | Edited by Jack Trodd | July 2023
Somewhere Near Perception Exhibition Text - Jack Trodd
An exhibition of Joe Grieve's recent series of diverse, abstract landscapes. Continuously drawn to Landscape Painting, Grieve finds it has the potential to embody one's deepest sensory experiences of nature. At once familiar, mundane, natural, yet overwhelmingly extraordinary. Inlaid into Grieve's outstanding handling of colour, light, mark making, and sense, is his interplay of Landscape Painting history. His passion for the sway of nature over humanity rings of 17th Century French and Dutch painters like Poussic, Lorrain, Cuyp & Hobbema. His use of almost biblical light tapping into the French painters' emphasis; and the Dutch painters' use of vast, cloud filled skies contrasting scale to land features expressing our place, and relationship to, the almightiness of nature. He embodies the passion and drama of the romantic movement. Toying, like Turner and Constable, with grand scale to evoke nature's power, and the tangible sense of literal atmosphere. His flamboyant ambition with colour and texture, and work with light and the sense of weather, growth, immersion in life, is evocative of the impressionists’ intent to capture the atmospheric effects and elements of nature. And his appreciation for expressionists like those of the Die Brücke group is undeniable; like Lirchner & Heckel, boldly playing with emotional gravitas of colour and line work, particularly notable in his smaller series of paintings. Through heavy layering and texture, Grieve gives his vistas a multisensory quality. Fundamental to his practice, he aspires to create paintings that evoke these memories of experiencing nature. In the pieces entitled Valley of the Wind, Primal & Emerging from the East natural phenomena reach from the landscapes and envelop us in the conditions shaping their natural beauty. The sun blinds your eyes, the rushing wind steals your breath and fills your ears, the swirling blizzard bites at your skin and scents of the undergrowth viscerally transport you to the past. Embracing this visual sensory experience, Grieve has incorporated actual sound and smell; working with artist and composer John Collet on an ambient, naturalistic soundscape. And, using oils, filling the space with rich, immersive aromas of the wilderness. Similar to how a church might use incense to amplify the aura of its space, these enhancements amplify the viewer experience and make the memory evocation of Grieve’s paintings more palpable. Recently, Grieve has been interested in the question of what makes something holy, recognising his closest experience to the concept of holiness, the idea of religious experience, is within nature. Embracing, capturing and projecting this feeling has become the starting point for much of Grieve's work: “I paint as though I’m walking through the woods, stumbling across the canvas, making marks as I go. I like the notion of paradise, but I feel that it lies just beyond the reach of my fingertips; the enigmatic places that I paint are an attempt to express this intangible feeling.” Grieve's Landscapes are an amalgamation of real – an avid traveller, he has immersed himself in the wilds of Rhode Island, the Swiss Alps and rural Ireland in preparation for Somewhere Near Perception - and imagined places. The result oscillating between abstraction and representation – befuddlingly realised in the work entitled Meander, where a seemingly familiar flat British countryside horizon opens into an increasingly surreal web of fields and boundaries. The ambiguity of how the layers interact, what recedes and what overlaps, flouts traditional norms of perspective. He attempts to anchor this chaos throughout the composition of the works. Intending for his abstract elements to allow viewers familiar interpretations of place, becoming portals to personal memories and experiences of the natural world.
The Other Side - An Exploration of Joe Grieve's Work - Anon
Grieve uses the medium of landscape painting in extreme colour to explore a vitally important theme, the impact of man upon nature which leads to its fragmentation and destruction. Over the two years it took him to create this body of work the climate emergency narrative has built momentum, we are seeing the deadly impact of extreme weather events more and more. Viewing Grieve’s individual work in silos drastically limits the strong narrative that flows through his work in a linear way. Grieve rarely seeks to represent land, figures, scenes in a natural or exact way. Instead, Grieve applies generally vigorous brushstrokes to express feeling and movement and most importantly impact. ‘Chaos of Clouds, my Beautiful Rainbow’ a highly abstracted landscape work, visually explores the fragmentation of Britain's landscapes and natural wonders. On first glance you’d be forgiven for viewing it as an explosive mess of colour, but the more you view and explore the work the detail begins to appear. Landscapes stacked on top of each other again and again hundreds of times Grieve tries in vain to reconstitute landscapes from his childhood that have been destroyed into an harmonious visual experience, you step back and view the work as a whole revealing a rainbow sky above the chaos below. Repetition of mark making is a common theme throughout this exhibition ‘Colstoun’ a work inspired by our own establishment gives an inhuman view point on the land, the sky above connects it with ‘Heather Moorland’ showing both emotional, geographical and literal connection between these scenes. Grieve’s ability to give context to seemingly disparate landscapes shouldn’t be underestimated. In a similar way the brushstrokes used to form the forested areas are replicated hundreds of times in multiple colours in Grieve’s work ‘Fight For Light’ further strengthening the connection between all the works in this exhibition. ‘Fight For Light’ is again a highly abstracted landscape which draws from Grieve’s earlier works ‘River Painting’ and ‘The Other Side’ portraying the powerful mycelium network as a carpet on which to build scenes. The explosive energy emanates outward from the centre of the piece disintegrating a crisp blue sunny day showing the ultimate power of nature. The brush strokes are bold and intense, grieve repeats the same stroke again and again to create an entire landscape in the same way pointillist repeated dots again and again to create form Grieve repeats swishes, the shape and texture of which are taken from the woodlands of his work ‘Colstoun’. Grieve’s undulating in and out of abstraction from painting to painting may seem random until viewed in sequential order. The repetition of colour or shape is obvious and the interconnectedness of his work more powerful when viewed as a sequence in time. Sequence reveals the chaos in his practice working on between 5 and 7 works simultaneously, bringing the same palette, brush and mark making elements between seemingly unrelated works. As a body of work Grieve’s undulating narrative is not dissimilar to the hills he paints valleys of darkness and sunlit peaks, his work is generally extreme and confronting, be it a literal atomic explosion or a surreal Azores landscape with floating lakes and gravity defying mountains. The snapshots created a pause for just a moment and embody the chaotic consciousness of Grieve’s mind as he desperately tries to highlight the perils associated with man’s impact on nature.
"RESIDENT I Artist Introduction - Joe Bennell Grieve" - Mackie Sinclair-Parry
originally featured: https://www.colstoun.co.uk/single-post/resident-i-artist-introduction-joe-bennell-grieve My first introduction to Joe Grieve was on the banks of the Blackwater River in Ireland. He was standing there in front of me with long curly blonde brown hair about to work for an artist that I'd collaborated a lot in the past showing me his sketch book. On his flight to Ireland he'd whipped out his sketch book and painted two studies of the Irish Sea whilst flying over it. The man lives to paint, he literally goes just a little bit mad (well madder than he is) if he stops painting for a prolonged period of time. I've worked with Joe on a number of projects at this point and he stresses to me with about 2 or 3 weeks to go before the project completion that "I'm gonna take a big break after this probably not paint for 3 or 4 months..." without fail a few days later he's stretched a canvas or his sketch book is out and ready to be filled with psychedelic landscape imagery. When Joe arrived at Colstoun in October 2022 he was the guinea pig, he's never one to shy away from a challenge and so without much thought or planning at the start of our residency journey I said to him... "so what do you want to do?"... he quickly responded "I want to paint a really big painting"... and so we set about collaborating on a giant work... he provided the creativity, the paint, the canvas, the wood, the ability and I provided a space... seems like a pretty fair collaboration. Within days what started to unfold is unlike anything I was expecting. after stretching a canvas over 4m wide and 2.4m tall (a single canvas by the way not a diptych) he began to paint another painting... in my mind I am thinking to myself what on earth is happening here? and then another canvas appears, and another one again... at this point I think to myself a young 25 year old has had a laugh and this guy has no idea what he's doing. but over the course of a month Joe painted and painted and explored and foraged his way around Colstoun producing a number of large works, a massive painting and countless sketches and studies. from dawn until dusk the boy paints. Joe immersed himself into our family and took advantage of the facility we provided him, honestly he was the perfect first person for the residency and provided me with the buy in from my family to pursue the residency in 2023 in a more meaningful way. As the days progressed the smell of oil paint permeated through the building the house became a hive of activity after 5 weeks past by in a flash it was sad to see Joe leave and return to London and his studio. he had to prepare for a second show with BWG gallery and left full of inspiration for a series of 50 small oil paintings that was realised with his show "Between Place & Time" on Soho Square. The works would be shown alongside larger paintings by Joe and lead to international public institutions connecting with Joe's work for the first time. After Joe finished his show we set about producing something on a different scale at Colstoun, we wanted to give people a chance to see how Joe could produce a show on a different scale, one that wouldn't be possible in London. The Other Side saw Joe spend the best part of a year bringing together a linear body of work that in Large scale represented a year of journeys and exploration both literal and emotional. It sits in the middle of a year which has seen Grieve be a part of 2 London Group shows, a Canadian group show curated by LBF Gallery and an inspirational trip to Nepal. Joe has provided us with a number of works for RESIDENT I including mosquito farm, where the colour has literally been sucked out of the work by mosquitos all that remains is a charcoal outline of what was too come. Grieve's works are becoming ever more distinctive and obviously by his hand combining a combination of colour, psychedelic imagery, imagined spaces, imagined flora and fauna interspersed with hidden imagery and symbolism littered throughout his work, the more you look for it the more you will find. 2025 is setting up to be an incredibly exciting year for Joe with interest for shows seen in Korea, USA as well as other big news to be announced. Drastic Detached is a highly contrasted abstract landscape that incorporates rich purple red skies that to my eye include voluptuous female figures dancing amongst the golden sunset light. Tied into lush green hills punctuated with cloud inversions pocketed across the landscape. Grieve loose and fast, painterly and bold brushstrokes provides the viewer the opportunity to add their own detail, and when combined with strong contrasting colours produces a neo-fauvist sensory delight.