Greer Honeywill
Encyclopedia
Greer Honeywill is an Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n conceptual artist whose work fuses sculptural conventions, autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 and critical thinking
Critical thinking
Critical thinking is the process or method of thinking that questions assumptions. It is a way of deciding whether a claim is true, false, or sometimes true and sometimes false, or partly true and partly false. The origins of critical thinking can be traced in Western thought to the Socratic...

.

Life and education

Born the daughter of Donald Desmond Spooner (1910-1989), a classical pianist who studied for a short time at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide
University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia...

 before becoming a self-taught realist painter. From 1954 Spooner exhibited regularly at the Walter Wotzke Gallery, Hahndorf, South Australia, and the Royal South Australian Society of Arts. He won the Maude Vizard-Wholohan Prize in 1955 and became a Fellow of the RSASA in 1958.

Influenced by her father, Greer Honeywill studied art at the South Australian School of Art and Western Teachers College (now University of South Australia
University of South Australia
The University of South Australia is a public university in the Australian state of South Australia. It was formed in 1991 with the merger of the South Australian Institute of Technology and Colleges of Advanced Education. It is the largest university in South Australia, with more than 36,000...

) graduating as an art teacher in 1964. She was invited to continue her studies in drama at Adelaide Teachers College in 1967 (now University of South Australia). In 2003 she graduated from Monash University, PhD in Fine Art and was awarded the Mollie Holman Medal for academic excellence.

After a brief marriage to David Druce, 1969-1976, she married author and social researcher Ross Honeywill
Ross Honeywill
Ross Honeywill is a social scientist and internationally published author.Honeywill specializes in social research and the understanding and application of social theory...

 in 1977. They reside in Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

.

Early work

Between 1963 and 1976 Greer Honeywill worked as stage designer with various Adelaide theatre groups. Her designs for the University of Adelaide
University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia...

 Theatre Guild best characterise this period particularly Eureka Stockade, 1974, and the 1976 production of Jumpers
Jumpers
Jumpers is a 1972 play by Tom Stoppard. It explores and satirises the field of academic philosophy, likening it to a less-than skilful competitive gymnastics display...

, both Adelaide Festival Fringe productions.
In 1974 she joined the founding committee for the Come Out Youth Arts Festival a key program of the Adelaide Festival of Arts. Between 1974 and 1981 she created and directed six large-scale, multidisciplinary works. Pageant (1977) and Perambulations Games (1979) were televised nationally by ABC TV
ABC Television
ABC Television is a service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched in 1956. As a public broadcasting broadcaster, the ABC provides four non-commercial channels within Australia, and a partially advertising-funded satellite channel overseas....

, while The Arts Circus (1979) was referred to as a ‘masterpiece for children’. The Human Chess Tournament (1975) exploring human relationships through the medium of live chess, played for 5 days in the Amphitheatre of the Adelaide Festival Centre
Adelaide Festival Centre
The Adelaide Festival Centre, Australia's first multi-purpose arts centre, was built in 1973 and opened three months before the Sydney Opera House. The Festival Centre is located approximately 50 metres north of the corner of North Terrace and King William Street, lying near the banks of the River...

 before becoming part of a new music concert in The Space. Composer, Malcolm Fox (1946-1997) created Cheque Mate , a musical contest between two groups of musicians dependent on the movement of the live chess pieces. The Human Chess Tournament was the first non-music event staged in the amphitheatre at the Adelaide Festival Centre
Adelaide Festival Centre
The Adelaide Festival Centre, Australia's first multi-purpose arts centre, was built in 1973 and opened three months before the Sydney Opera House. The Festival Centre is located approximately 50 metres north of the corner of North Terrace and King William Street, lying near the banks of the River...

. The Adelaide Festival, 1976, commissioned Super Scrabble for the amphitheatre. British actor John Stride
John Stride
John Stride is an English actor best known for his television work during the 1970s. Stride was born in London, the son of Margaret and Alfred Teneriffe Stride...

 (playing Coriolanus
Coriolanus
Gaius Marcius Coriolanus was a Roman general who is said to have lived in the 5th century BC. He received his toponymic cognomen "Coriolanus" because of his exceptional valor in a Roman siege of the Volscian city of Corioli. He was then promoted to a general...

for The South Australian Theatre Company's Adelaide Festival production), officiated as The Adjudicator.

Honeywill resigned from the South Australian Education Department in 1982 to begin work as an event director.

Work

Greer Honeywill relocated to Melbourne, 1990. She joined a shared studio space, '308B at Sydney Road' in Brunswick, Victoria
Brunswick, Victoria
Brunswick is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 km north from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Moreland...

, 1991-1998 with painter David Disher, (winner of the Sulman Prize
Sulman Prize
The Sir John Sulman Prize is one of Australia's longest running art prizes, having been established in 1936.It is now held concurrently with the Archibald Prize, Australia's best known art prize, and also with the Wynne Prize, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales , Sydney.-Criteria:The Sir John...

, 2007), Judy Horocek, cartoonist, artist, writer and children's book creator and Michael Pearce, artist and stage designer. Major work from this period, the collaborative The Great Australian Dream Exhibition, was exhibited at Gallery 101, Melbourne, 1995.

In 1998 Greer Honeywill returned to research-based studies at Monash University
Monash University
Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....

, Melbourne, where more than three decades of focus on human interaction, social patterning, child’s play and reflections on her own suburban childhood shaped a new body of work that continues. Dr Susan Sidlauskas, now Associate Professor & Graduate Program Director 19th Century, Rutgers, University of New Jersey described the exegesis accompanying the body of work as a…fascinating hybrid of academic research, oral history
Oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...

, social analysis, artistic imagination, autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 and archiving. It was quite unlike anything I had read before, but I was completely impressed by the author’/artist’s breadth of research and artistic imagination
.

Since 2003 Honeywill has continued to make work from large-scale outdoor installations to more formal plinth based sculptural objects and wall mounted text based works. Greer Honeywill is interested in distillation, repetition, modularity and generative processes that provide understanding of how history, society and culture impact on the human condition.

Greer Honeywill relocated to Tasmania in 2010.

Awards

  • 2000 Allport Writing Award (Textile Fibre Forum magazine)
  • 2002 Coates and Wood Foundry Prize
  • 2002 Monash University, Doctoral Completion Scholarship
  • 2003 Yering Station Sculpture Prize
  • 2003 World Sculpture News Prize
  • 2003 Mollie Holman Academic Medal, Monash University
  • 2005 Invited installation artist, Castlemaine State Festival, Post Office Installation Series
  • 2006 Arts Victoria, Arts Development Grant
  • 2008 Mitchell Family Award, (Montalto Sculpture Prize)
  • 2008 Inaugural artist in residence, Carr Design Group, Melbourne
  • 2009 Sunshine Coast Art Prize, Commended Award

External links

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