Greer Twiss graduated with honours from Elam School of Fine Arts in the 1950’s. There he became very interested in cast metals and in 1965 he was awarded a QEII Arts Council Travel Grant that enabled him to travel to Britain and Europe where he studied the lost-wax process.
He has worked in a number of media including lead and sheet galvanised iron, but he is best known for his tactile bronzes. Bronze casting had seldom been undertaken by artists in New Zealand when Greer began, and that necessitated setting up his own foundry.
His sculpture is included in all major public and many private collections in New Zealand including Auckland Art Gallery -Toi o Tamaki and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. He is also represented in numerous international public and private collections.
One of the largest and most important early contemporary public sculpture commissions was his large untitled bronze commissioned by the Auckland City Council for Karangahape Road in 1968.
Greer also had a long career teaching at the University of Auckland, where he was Associate Professor at the Elam School of Fine Arts. He became head of sculpture in 1974, retiring from the school in 1998.
In 2002 he was made an ONZM for sculpture in the Queen’s Birthday Honours and received an Arts Foundation Icon Award in 2011.
Greer Twiss www.thearts.co.nz/artists/greer-twiss
Previous Speakers
2023: Gretchen Albrecht
2021: David McCracken
2020: Virginia King
2019: Jeff Thomson
2017: Marte Szirmay
2017: Michael Parekōwhai
2016: Phil Dadson
2015: Greer Twiss
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