Greg Dunlop creates installations, videos, drawings and performances.
His work disrupts an environment, which in turn disrupts the viewer and snaps them out of their everyday existence.
He sees context as his material. In each situation, he asks, ‘What is the context and how can it be disrupted?’ He tends towards subtle, although often striking, interventions which disrupt the viewer with minimal effort. These precise interventions do not absorb the viewer entirely but allow their attention to drift back to the space, albeit with an invigorated sense of awareness.
In one work, a long thin wide sheet of transparent cellophane stretches through space; the breeze gently lifts and carries it in a slow undulating motion. It divides the space, but due to its transparency and continuous movement, it dissolves into the space. At times it is invisible: parts of it momentarily disappear, then reappear as its form shifts and is caught by the light. The light reflects onto the surrounding environment creating plays of light on the surfaces, similar to the reflections of light that come off water. You are not focused on the material but on the play of light on the material: the streaks of light gliding along it, quickly but steadily and effortlessly they emerge, then fade back into nothingness.
He is interested in who we are beyond our personal identity. Is our identity, that is, the forms, mental and physical, with which we identify, who we truly are? Are they just the surface level - like waves on an ocean? If so, what lies beneath? If we lose them or they change, do we become less? What is left when we let go of these things?
When you look at a tree, you are aware of the tree. When you have a thought or feeling, you are aware of that thought or feeling. When you have a pleasurable painful experience, you are aware of that experience. What you are aware of changes continuously; what stays constant is the awareness, the consciousness, in which these things appear and disappear. His work is primarily a catalyst that aims to connect the viewer back to that awareness.
What is important to him is to create an experience of awareness without thought.
In his spare time, he likes to write about himself in the third person.
For more information, please email gjadunlop@gmail.com