Brian Griffiths
The Only Living (or Your Lonely Saucer Eyes)

19th October 2007 - 20th April 2008

'Curiosity - in both its noun and verb forms - winds through Griffiths'
sculptural practice like a probing, purblind worm. Just as early gentlemen scientists such as Olaus Wormius (1588-1655) assembled Cabinets of Curiosities brimming with bizarre holdings of dubious authenticity such as unicorn's horns and Scythian Lambs (a woolly fern thought to be half-plant, half-sheep), so in the artist's work we encounter a smudging of the line between empirical knowledge and entertainment, and found objects that, however much they strain to be something else, however much they might be
massaged, tickled or spun, are fated to always be their own, disappointed selves.'
Tom Morton for A Bulletin, 2007
 
The Furnace Commission is Greenland Street's annual project for artists to develop their work on an ambitious scale, responding to one of the largest and most unique exhibition spaces in the UK. The Only Living was the result of months of intensive work by UK artist Brian Griffiths, using The Furnace as studio and muse.
 
The Only Living drew on the devices of showmanship from theatre, sideshows and certain sculptural traditions that exaggerate scale and manipulate perspective. The viewers became performers that animated the unfolding tableaux as they moved through works that became frames to sculptures that seem like backdrops. Sometimes mimicking the shabby grandeur of the space they inhabited, the sculptural works combined with their surroundings to create a surreal landscape that confused categories of the found and the made, the everyday and the fantastical, the humorous and the melancholy.
 
Griffiths' monumental creations are portals for adventure. His conceptual rigour is bound up with the process of making, so that everyday materials and objects are selected for their potential for fantasy and transformation, setting up rich evocative experiences for the viewer that promise escape yet remain rooted in the mundane. Aspirational, and yet tragically flawed, his works are charged with humour, discontent and sadness.
 
Griffiths was born in 1968 in Stratford upon Avon and now lives and works in London. He has shown extensively both in the UK and internationally including exhibitions at the Barbican, the Saatchi Gallery, Camden Arts Centre, Kunst der Gegenwart, Austria, and Shanghai International Art Festival.

Limited Edition Print
Alive is a limited edition lithographic print by Brian Griffiths.
982mm x 695mm
Edition of 100, signed by the artist
£100, unframed, plus £8 postage and packaging
Available at Greenland Street’s bookshop, or email info@afoundation.org.uk if you would like to place an order to pay by cash or cheque.

Commission supported by Arts Council England

Limited Edition print by Brian Griffiths now available to order online

Brian Griffiths
Detail from The Only Living (Or Your Lonely Saucer Eyes) , 2007
Image by Andy Stagg

Brian Griffiths
Detail from The Only Living (Or Your Lonely Saucer Eyes) , 2007
Image by Andy Stagg

Brian Griffiths
Detail from The Only Living (Or Your Lonley Saucer Eyes) , 2007
Image by Andy Stagg

Brian Griffiths
Detail from The Only Living (Or Your Lonely Saucer Eyes) , 2007
Image by Andy Stagg

Brian Griffiths
Detail from The Only Living (Or Your Lonely Saucer Eyes) , 2007
Image by Andy Stagg