20 April 2015

Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) will present both new and major existing works by highly regarded Melbourne-based artist Greg Creek in its leading winter exhibition The Desktop Drawings from 30 May to 9 August.

The catalyst for this exhibition was SAM's acquisition in 2014 of The Melbourne Desktop Drawing, originally commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in 2003.

Shepparton Art Museum Director Kirsten Paisley said:

‘Securing The Melbourne Desktop Drawing for SAM has been very exciting due to the scale and importance of this extraordinary work.

‘This exhibition provides the first opportunity to really understand a major part of Creek's practice, in the desktop drawings. Initially beginning as the throw away blotting sheets for Creek's large allegorical oil paintings, the desktop works have since become a focus of his practice, significant in their own right. The exhibition will also present ChatterShapes, a 52m wall-based work previously shown only in Scotland, and a body of approximately 40 new drawings Greg is making specifically for SAM's show, that explore Love, Death and Politics.

‘Greg Creek: The Desktop Drawings will map associations with a life-time of remembrances, knowing, observances and longing. The exhibition works like a junk shop of ideological symbolism whereby the act of collectivism, architecture, language, consumerism, national politics and daily life all become the one subject, a poetics of life.'

Created on modest scaled desks and yet sometimes beguiling by their incredible length, Greg Creek's drawings focus upon the richness of a studio process that captures the interaction between the incidentals of everyday events and universal contexts.

Greg Creek: The Desktop Drawings brings together a selection from Creek's extraordinary drawing practice now spanning 20 years – ranging from Melbourne via Europe to Shepparton with a highlight the growing body of new drawings commissioned specifically by SAM for The Drawing Wall #19, showing from 30 May to 30 August 2015.

Greg Creek said:

'The exhibition at SAM is a terrific opportunity to see a group of the works together – it sort of shows how they developed and gives a glimpse of what they have led to.'

‘There is an intimacy about the drawings that links the viewer looking at the work to where I was when I made it. I imagine viewers looking at the drawings and scribbles and reading the words mixed in at the same time with their own thoughts'.

'Experiences associated with a particular place might only be a small distance apart but they might be separated by years in time.'

'The new work for Shepparton will accumulate over time, with new drawings displayed each week – offering a different sort of narrative to each visit – like the Melbourne Desktop Drawing that will be unfurled several meters at a time.'

Events

The official opening of Greg Creek: The Desktop Drawings will be held on Saturday 30 May, following an artist talk at 3pm. Entry is free, please phone SAM on (03) 5832 9861 to RSVP.

On Thursday 25 June, SAM Director Kirsten Paisley will present a floor talk on the exhibition at 6pm. Entry is free, please phone SAM on (03) 5832 9861 to RSVP.

Shepparton Art Museum is proudly provided by Greater Shepparton City Council, located at 70 Welsford Street, Shepparton. For general SAM enquiries and bookings please contact: (03) 5832 9861, email art.museum@shepparton.vic.gov.au, or visit https://www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au/ for more information.

Image: Greg Creek ChatterShapes (Mechanisms of Gardens) 2009, mixed media, text on cut paper, pins 100 x 345 cm, originally commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival for the 2009 Visual Arts project ‘The Enlightenments', courtesy the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne © the artist