Greer Twiss

To mark the artist's death in July 2025, this work was exhibited with this label:

Greer Twiss began his extraordinary artistic career as a teenage puppeteer, devising, making and operating marionettes, first for charity events and later for theatrical performances, festivals and television broadcasts. His interest in activating figures and objects in stage-like settings carried through into his work as a sculptor, where he became known for representing quite ordinary activities and materials with a startling, revelatory freshness. Though often delivered with humour, his works were also edged with keen observations about life and human nature.

Best known for his imaginative bronze casting and angular galvanised metal sculptures, Twiss exhibited throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally in a long and remarkable career that included significant public commissions and an influential teaching role at the University of Auckland from 1966 to 1998.

The challenges of expressing movement in static materials such as bronze held an enduring fascination for Twiss, and in the 1960s he created a series of sculptures modelled on athletes, their muscles straining as they undertook feats of strength and speed. Greyhounds Racing exchanges human competitors with canine ones, revelling in the fluid muscularity of running dogs, seen both as individuals and as a molten, surging pack.