Brian Griffiths - Borrowed World, Borrowed Eyes

About

Brian Griffiths creates monumental sculptures from materials which invoke feelings of familiarity or nostalgia, creating what Griffiths terms as ?short cuts? to a sense of authenticity. His installations are often highly theatrical or absurd - the gallery appears as a stage and the objects within it as carefully constructed props. Using recycled or discarded materials, Griffiths trades on their histories and metonymic associations, re-working them into installations with new, imagined and contradictory narratives.

The resulting works affirm the way in which meaning is inscribed into certain materials and objects whilst simultaneously stripping them from their origins in terms of history, time and place, presenting objects in isolation or as missing parts of a bigger whole. In doing so Griffiths transcends these materials and gives them a second life, creating sculptures which defy immediate classification and possess an anonymity and status akin to that of the curiosity object.

Griffith?s works are often engaged with notions of the exotic and the myths that reside in our collective imaginations, conveying a sense of adventure, exploration and movement - earlier works refer to the literary influences such as Gulliver?s Travels and Treasure Island. Griffiths cleverly selects materials and objects which juxtapose and scramble these narratives and histories, creating works which are hybrids of fact and fiction.