Object enthusiast and story teller champion, Brian Griffiths was invited into the studio by the Associate artists based at the Glassyard Building in Stockwell. Brain started proceedings with a manifesto, that was akin to a chinwag typically experienced around a water-cooler on the 4th floor of an office block, rather than the usual hot-blooded monologue that could be easily scripted into a scene of Les Misérables. Informality was the context evidently in play right from the start, for Brian kicked things off by announcing his manifesto as he sketchily produced a stapled document from his back pocket, and which he then relished in the silence as he started to meticulously unravel his size 18 Arial cues.
“I make sculpture because it sits in the world with us, like us. It is inanimate and yet defines us. Self and stuff seem always mixed up. I am drawn to how we think with things and how things think. In the studio I negotiate between what I want, and what the things need. This is often a situational comedy. I consider sculpture a social act, a social investigation, a type of unruly collective storytelling. I am concerned with how my sculpture differs from objects in general circulation as commodities, and what relations and values this difference sets up. I make art that is full of contradictions, fallibility and feelings – something that is unremarkably tired, as an alternative to the shiny and box-fresh. I am making a place for us, for the human.”
Following a free-flowing discussion in and out of the manifesto, our conversation moved to the work of two of the Associates, who discussed their practice alongside their fragmented works on show within the studio. Starting with Tom Bull, who talked about the practice of making models, and how the introduction of linguistic concerns can make this a slippery area to operate in. Wes Gilpin followed by presenting snippets of ephemeral moments on video that were saturated with melancholia. Hopeful, and yet brilliantly flawed by their blind innocence.
Tom Bull
