Greg Palmer
BA (Hons), MA

Associate Lecturer

Department of Art and Music

greg.palmer@solent.ac.uk

Biography

Greg Palmer teaches on all the BA (Hons) Fine Art studio modules.

Greg completed a foundation course at Tameside College in 1979, graduated from Portsmouth Polytechnic with a BA (Hons) Fine Art in 1982, and from Wimbledon School of Art with an MA in Printmaking in 1991.

Further information

Greg has extensive experience of work within the creative industries.

2001 - A Matter Of, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth.
2003 - Synthetic Truths, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth.
2006 - Celeste Art Prize, Finalist Show, Truman Brewery, London.
2006 - Colectif Anglais ArtResearch, Le Grange, Centre d’Art Contemporain Du Luxembourg/ Belge, Florenville, Belgium.
2008 - Aquire, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth.
2008 - Sunbeams Giving The Air A Kiss (Birds in Contemporary Art). Millais Gallery, Southampton.
2008 - One, Container Gallery, Bristol.
2013 - Playback, Peacock Yard, London.

Collections and awards

Work in private collections in this country and abroad.
Leicester Schools Collection.
1987 - Rank Xerox printmaking collection.
1990 - Dane Printmaking Prize
1991 - The Julian Trevelyan Memorial Prize.

Selected texts, press, catalogues

2001 - UK01: 'Greg Palmer’s Plastic Forest of Signs'. Text, Graham Coulter Smith.
2003 - 'Synthetic Truths', text, Rosemary Shirley.
2003 - 'Contemporary Magazine' No. 49, preview Sotris Kyriacou.
2003 - 'Wallpaper', Sales Section, edited by Jeroen Bergmans.
2003 - 'The Times', best shows nationwide, Amber Cowans.
2003 - 'Artists Newsletter', Due South, Artists Story.
2008 - 'The Guardian Guide', exhibitions preview.
2006 - 'The Celeste Prize', finalists catalogue.

Residencies

1988 - Two month residency, Duisburg, Germany.

Greg has taken part in a range of research projects throughout his academic career, creating work that considers constructed landscapes and the placement of buildings in the environment.

On-going research engages with constructed landscapes and the placement of buildings in the environment. Also of significance is the decoding and deconstruction of signs and symbols and demarcations of the boundaries between private and public spaces.

Current research also examines institutions of the gallery and museum, particularly the presentation of items within those arenas and how these institutions document artworks and other culturally significant items.

Other elements embedded in the work include alchemy, superstition and reason, synchronicity, autobiography, fiction, and natural history.

“The connection between nature and consumerism is made in the paintings of Greg Palmer. Palmer has accumulated a vocabulary of signs; typography, symbols and abstractions from nature, culled from a variety of sources including corporate logos and packaging and textile design. He often combines these signs in landscape images where, like perfect golf courses all the familiar constituents of the classic landscape are present but seem synthetically engineered. Palmer’s images point to the idea that ‘landscape’ is itself an artificial construct, all experiences of the outdoors is mediated, all countryside is managed in some way, even areas of the UK still thought of as wilderness are kept that way through careful human intervention.

"In their everyday environment, the signs Palmer collects operate as the bridge between representation and reality, they become a kind of shorthand, we see them but we look past their visual attributes taking in only what they denote. In its original context we connect the snowflake motif with refrigeration instructions on frozen food rather than noticing the particular characteristics of the snowflake itself – they are about information not decoration.’’ - extract from a larger text by Rosemary Shirley, 2003.

Courses

BA (Hons) Fine Art

Nurture your talent for painting, sculpture or applied art, guided by a passionate team of artists, curators and theorists, in a supportive, creative community.

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Greg Palmer BA (Hons), MA