The workshop is offered "in the spirit of the gift". Please engage in that way, offer what feels right for you. Any gifting beyond $20 will support Greer’s work.
The Black Summer fires have come and gone but the floods here and the fires in Europe and America bring the effects of Climate Change back to our hearts and minds. At times the realisation of what is happening to the Earth is overwhelming.
Greer says. "During the workshop we will be working with a small object (talisman) that you bring, an object that you can close your hand around. The object should be something that evokes in you memories of the environment you love and what has been lost – it could be a stone, a pebble, a stick, a flower, a bone, a leaf, a human made found object, a handful of soil… or maybe it is a drawing you have made folded into a small bundle, or other intentionally made item. It must be something that you are prepared to part with. Preferably choose something that that is organic. I will have some items to choose from if you find yourself empty handed."
In this interactive performance/workshop, artist and poet Greer Taylor will create a space where participants can express the grief they feel for the Earth and its sentient inhabitants. Through a process guided by poetry and stitching, participants are invited to engage with grief rather than what is often expected of us; to sweep it aside in order to “get on with work and life”. Through this process the realisation 'what we grieve for, is what we love', is given a space and place to be expressed, and we are better able to proceed.
About Greer
Thoughts of land, wilderness and grief are never far from Greer’s mind, her practice spans many disciplines from sculpture, to installation, to performance, to workshops, to poetry…
Greer's sculptural work has been included in many public sculpture exhibitions such as Sculpture by the Sea; she has also won major awards: Western Sydney Sculpture Prize and Acquisition, Sculpture at Scenic World, reIMAGINE Sculpture Prize. Her most recent public sculpture can be seen outside the Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre in Nowra: a work called ‘phases’ that is about the phases and cycles of life together with the essential role of green plants in relation to the sun to maintain a vibrant planet.
Greer has installed many solo exhibitions, in 2019 her exhibition at the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery ‘ephemeral: lessons in grief’ explored grief and ephemerality, with the use of photographs of her ephemeral artworks, sculptures made using natural materials as well as poetry.
In February / March of 2021 Greer ran a public engagement project as sculptor in residence during the Sculpture in the Gardens exhibition held at the Wollongong Botanic Gardens. The project called ‘ghost trees’ was intended to be a remembering of all the beings and trees that were lost to the 2019/20 fires. Visitors were invited to contribute to growing a forest of small bandaged trees as well as by stitching ribbons that remembered what counts: ‘frogs count’,’ trees count’… which were hung from the boughs of a ancient melaleuca. During the 2022 October long weekend ‘ghost trees’ will experience a remaking during ‘What the Body Knows but May have Forgotten’ event in Huskisson.
In July 2021her residency at Bundanon explored ‘not-doing … sensing’: an exploration of not-doing in a culture addicted to reactive doing, in a world driven by outcomes and busyness.
In 2014 she published a collection of poetry curated with images of her ephemeral artworks in a book titled ‘ephemeral’. Her latest, as yet unpublished poetry collection ‘veiling, grief and delight’ is currently in development with actor/director Jillian O’Dowd to become a multimedia performance event. She is also working on turning her long form poem ‘coevolution’ into a film.