We are looking for the next big thing! Announcing the FIRST Elephant x Griffin Art Prize; a collaboration between the UK’s premier art prize for recent graduates, Griffin Art Prize, and international contemporary visual culture magazine Elephant.
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DIRECTOR’S LETTER
Dear friends and loyal audience,
It is with a heady mixture of sadness, pride and anticipation that I write this letter. To address the sadness first, I must let you all know that we will be closing Griffin Gallery to the public on 24th May 2018. After hearing this, I’m sure you understand the feeling of pride; the last six years have been extraordinary and exceeded all expectations. Then, on to the anticipation: most of the Griffin team will soon be joining our new friends at Elephant Magazine to support them as they grow into a global creative community.
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Perimeter Space at Griffin Gallery is delighted to present Do Re Mi Fa So La Te curated by Karen David
Ralph Anderson, Kiera Bennett, Katrina Blannin, Isha Bohling, Juan Bolivar, Rebecca Byrne, Joel Crerar, Rosalind Davis, Mathew Gibson, Jane Hayes Greenwood, Alex Gough, Fiona Grady, Jeanette Gunnarsson, Aly Helyer, Justin Hibbs, Ana Kazaroff, Dominic Kennedy, Caterina Lewis, Mac McNaughton, Joe Madeira, Lee Maelzer, Alex March, Alex Gene Morrison, José Carlos Naranjo, Stephanie Nebbia, Selma Parlour, Charley Peters, James Petrucci, Tom Platt, Kes Richardson, Alan Sastre, Susan Sluglett, Mimei Thompson, Alice Wilson, Sarah Kate Wilson, K. Yoland, Neil Zakiewicz
Do – A deer, a female deer
Re – A drop of golden sun
Mi – A name I call myself
Fa – A long, long way to run
So – A needle pulling thread
La – A note to follow so
Te – A drink with jam and bread
(Rodgers and Hammerstein The Sound of Music 1959)
From the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, ‘Do-Re-Mi’ is sung by Julie Andrews in the film adaptation of The Sound of Music where she plays the part of Maria; a matriarch or nanny in charge of looking after the Von Trapp children. Maria weaves a narrative to teach the notes of musical scales in turn teaching the Von Trapp children to sing in the process. In Do Re Mi Fa So La Te the musical scale is used as a metaphor for the use of colour in painting – When you know the notes to sing. You can sing most anything. The paintings in this exhibition are installed in the Perimeter Space, on a pale yellow 16m wall and aligns the exhibition with the beginning of Spring; heralding the joy of colour and the hope of fresh starts, and new-blooms of edelweiss.
A publication accompanies this exhibition with text from Isha Bohling. Publication launch date to follow.
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Perimeter Space at Griffin Gallery is delighted to present MINDY LEE & J.A.L.-B. where Mindy Lee creates a dressing room-like space, installing her paintings into the 16 metre Perimeter Space.
A publication accompanies this exhibition with text from Michael Szpakowski
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Anne-Marie Creamer’s installation takes as its subject the linear progression, and dramatic staging, of the transition of an actor into a fictional character, including the initial stages of the script, diagrams of the gestures and movements of the actor, props and lighting, the actor endlessly rehearsing a single scene, and finally silhouettes and props of the stage – shown from the perspective of looking in from the wings of the theatre; A back-stage viewing, A Diagram of Waiting.
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Curated by Karen David
Sarah Baker, Sasha Bowles, Adam Dix, Magda Drwiega, Richard Ducker, Matt Gee, Ludovica Gioscia, Jane Harris, Samuel Herbert, Sharon Kivland, Hiroe Komai, Liane Lang, Karen Murat, Zoë Mendelson, Darren O’Brien, Harry Roberts, Dallas Seitz, Sophia Starling, Holly Stevenson, Karen Tang, Julie Verhoeven, Alice Wilson, David Ben White, Neil Zakiewicz
Window Sill takes its starting point from the aesthetic encountered in ‘seaside homes’ where often windows become impromptu displays for kitsch ornaments, nostalgic memorabilia and domestic paraphernalia. In this latest exhibition at Perimeter Space, its long window becomes lined with sculptures, window stickers and glass hangings which blur the meaning of sculptural objects when (re)positioned in this way. Perimeter Space is supported by Griffin Gallery providing experimental dialogues and collaborations in this new project space.
Sarah Baker has created an installation in the 16 metre Perimeter Space in the style and aspirational aesthetics of a nautical themed luxury silk scarf.
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Tim A Shaw will be creating a site specific installation in the Perimeter Space. Viewable only through windows from the outside of the building, the space within will hold a timber frame ramp that reveals a narrow sanctuary containing light works, paintings and collages.
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Jack Otway’s ‘corpse-painted’ window panels will blacken the facade of the Griffin Gallery’s Perimeter Space in children’s face paint. Wobbly rendered sunken eyes will adorn the panels in rhythmic fashion exploring the cosmetic as an important site for meaning-making.
Otway is interested in the movement of extreme beliefs from subcultural periphery to the mainstream and how these are visually formulated and packaged for commercial or political means.
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Griffin Gallery Perimeter Space presents Mannequin curated by Karen David. Initiated this year with an inaugural exhibition presenting the work of Susan Sluglett and Fabian Peake, the Perimeter Space explores experimental projects in the periphery of the main Griffin Gallery.
The selected artists for Mannequin explore practices ranging from painting, film, performance, and site-specific installation whilst sharing common connections to ‘fabric’ as a medium. For this exhibition they have been given a singular rule to dress a mannequin in their own approach and interpretation.
In a ‘post-medium-specific’ age where the significance of medium is negotiated, Mannequin invites these artists to carry their own concerns through this exhibition premise; utilising a window-dressing-mannequin as their supporting structure or blank canvas. In Kosuth’s words the ‘essence of art’ morphs from medium to medium.
In 1974 Joseph Beuys, wearing his signature layer of felt, spent three days in a solitary space at the René Block Gallery, New York with a coyote in his now iconic performance I Like America and America Likes Me. For Beuys the medium of felt (alongside fat, sledges and walking sticks) reoccurs as a key material from his personal mythology. In a similar way Mannequin sees the artists presenting their own recognisable tropes; integrating found objects, consumer culture, the history of the figure and the politics of fashion, using their ‘visual shorthands’ to re-position our reading of these values and reinforce their own personal mythology.
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Positions, continues the dialogue begun by Susan Sluglett in Perfume Island, first shown at New Greenham Arts, Berkshire; the site of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp which was established to protest for nuclear disarmament. Positions is accompanied by a newly commissioned poem Stone Curlew by Fabian Peake.
In this instalment at Griffin Gallery Perimeter Space, Sluglett presents a series of paintings as posters or placards that suggest the atmosphere of a protest that is either about to start or has just finished. The paintings here employ abbreviated chess themes as a ground. Part of the secret of winning chess is to realise when conventional values can be overturned and a sacrificial move can be made which will achieve victory. The war-like game of chess as a ground motif, is juxtaposed with peaceful, neutralising imagery of nature; such as plants or birds of various species.
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