Greg Angus
In Work, and in life, Greg Angus influenced by eastern philosophies, aesthetics and Japanese culture. After graduating from UBC he moved to Japan and lived in Tokyo developing my painting practice and living as a visual artist. His paintings are layered on wood panels with up to thirty layers of pigmented wax, scraped back to reveal previous layers - a process influenced partly by traditional Japanese urushi painting - translated into a multilayered contemporary practice. Often the work evokes nature, movements of water, infrared images of ocean temperatures and the planet, the cosmos and hurricane spirals. It also references the human body, biological patterns, DNA markers, and the body in relation to space. In addition to work in encaustic painting, Greg Angus continues works in collage and small scaled sculptures.
MOBY DICK and SNAKES & LADDERS, both collages, explore our relationship to nature and technology. The first piece, the story of whale hunting and life aboard a working ship amongst a culturally diverse crew, reflects issues of social status, class, and belief systems. The second piece, the game of Snakes and Ladders, is a metaphorical exploration of the labyrinth myth, which was a technology designed to keep nature (represented by the minotaur beast) in a state of human control. This myth reflects our relationship to evolving technologies, which seek to separate us from nature and to solve the problems created by us in a labyrinthian pursuit of technological innovation. The collage also depicts the buddhist Vietnamese monk, Thích Quảng Đức, who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection in 1963 as protest to state persecution of Buddhism, by the Christian leadership. Combined, these two collages represent two important aspects of meaning his work: namely, class struggle (labour as a commodity) and technological confinement (power/control).
