- Venue
- Vilma Gold
- Location
- London
For this exhibition Griffiths has sourced five identical metal structures, prefabricated and second-hand, as is common in his practice. Taller than the average person, they stand awkwardly in the gallery like dormant giants. They are clothed with large pieces of canvas tarpaulin, the stains and splashes showing signs of a previous life. One is forced to walk carefully through the labyrinthic narrow gaps left between the structures and the gallery walls.
Griffiths has a tradition of building monumental scale sculptures that are portals to another world. In the past he has made spaceships out of cardboard boxes, a travelling caravan built from old furniture and a sailing device that looks like a purposeless ship, a futile vessel. His best-known work, commissioned for Gloucester Road Underground station, is partly constituted by a monstrous-looking gigantic panda head with a roughly finished surface and a cartoonish face. It is representative of his frequently humorous but nonetheless melancholic installations.
In this attempt to build new worlds, he reminds me of another British artist – Mike Nelson. Both strive to construct a fantastic macrocosm throughout their installations, a parallel universe where lo-fi everyday materials serve a more important purpose. Griffiths’ central concern with building ingenious personal cosmologies from everyday popular culture, can be compared to Nelson’s utopian vision.
This however, is the Brian Griffiths’ of the past. The Invisible Show is a departure from his previous work, a rupture with the trope of creating fantastic worlds. The premise in itself is bound to disappoint. By referring to HG Wells’ The Invisible Man, one understands that Griffiths is trying to accomplish invisible works. The unapologetic structures, swathed in a similar material to the bandages used by Wells’ invisible man, are intriguing at first – they urge you to find out exactly what they are concealing – but disappointing once examined closely. Like The Invisible Man, there is nothing to see under the bandages. Griffiths’ attempt to make the structures look like they are actually hiding anything at all falls through. Hence, all one has left to focus on are the barren canvas sheets.
The materials selected offer little possibility of opening up a discussion or producing evocative experiences. Perhaps, like in previous installations, the materials chosen are witnesses of an extinct era – useless and obsolete. However no matter how hard you try, all you see are five quiescent and unsophisticated beige forms. Griffiths’ conceptual thinking usually goes hand in hand with his formal development. These structures are certainly a progression, less referential and less pop art. The issue is partly that they produce no reaction, no affect or emotional connection. In fact, while visiting the gallery four visitors walked in. They were all gone within 10 minutes, staring blankly and appearing equally disillusioned. The humour and the accessibility are gone. All that remains is the melancholy.
