Mary Griffiths (b1965, the Wirral) has long been making drawings of (frequently derelict) industrial sites. A year and a half ago, she was introduced to Astley Green Colliery, a former coalmine in Lancashire, which was closed in 1970 and knocked down but for its winding house and headgear – rare examples of 1908 working-class engineering. Spending time at the site, walking around the surrounding geography, reclaimed by nature with trees, grass and mosses, and talking to the volunteers (the colliery is now a museum), Griffiths filled myriad A6 sketchpads with figurative drawings, focusing on aspects that intrigued her, from details of the machinery to a visiting colony of pigeons.
Mary Griffiths, Circuit Gate, 2018. Inscribed graphite on gesso on plywood, 21 x 1.8 x 29.7. Photo courtesy Alan Cristea Gallery.
From these drawings, she then extrapolated her larger abstract works, made on plywood, with layers of acrylic gesso, and even more layers of graphite, pushed into the board and burnished, before being cut into with an etching needle. Using thousands of straight lines, placed at minutely different angles, she creates an oscillating effect reminiscent of the surface geography of the region. One work, Wild Honey, for example, represents the seams of the coalmine, the waterways and the main roads. Griffiths sees her work as “an identification of the remarkable work that was done in industrial areas” across the country, and it is important to her to capture something of the “gravity and splendour” of the working-class engineering.
.jpg)
Mary Griffiths, Sweet Briar (Yates & Thom Ltd), 2018. Inscribed graphite on gesso on plywood, 49 x 2.5 x 69 cm. Photo courtesy Alan Cristea Gallery.
Protest and Remembrance
Miriam de Búrca | Joy Gerrard | Mary Griffiths | Barbara Walker
Alan Cristea Gallery, London
28 February – 30 March 2019
Interview by ANNA McNAY
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY
Click on the pictures below to enlarge
Sussex Landscape: Chalk, Wood and Water
With an outstanding collection of work from JMW Turner to Eric Ravilious to Wolfgang Tillmans, this ...
Dundee’s V&A Design explores the fascinating history of this miraculous but now highly controversi...
,-Mama-Look-a-Ban-Passin,-1990-300.jpg)
Paint Like the Swallow Sings Calypso
Paul Dash, Errol Lloyd and John Lyons show their own works alongside those of others from the collec...
Elizabeth Price’s explorations of the archives of carpet manufacturers operating in Scotland from ...
Vanessa Baird – interview: ‘I don’t think art can rescue anything’
As two shows of her thrilling, carnivalesque drawings open in the UK, Oslo-based artist Vanessa Bair...
Making Modernism: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münte...
This is a brilliant exposition of these four painters, who were working in Germany at the start of t...
Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art
Expect the unexpected from this exuberant show of ceramic fine art, filled as it is with fantastical...
In this, Qiu Zhijie’s first solo UK show, we must mentally navigate his ink map paintings, in whic...
John Riddy – interview: ‘I don’t want to make an ordinary print. I w...
John Riddy talks about his work over the years and his new show at Frith Street Gallery in London, w...
Grafton Architects: ‘A building is a collection of experiences. It’s n...
Designing a new building for the LSE, Grafton’s founders, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, wer...
Fuseli and the Modern Woman: Fashion, Fantasy, Fetishism
A precisely focused exhibition takes us into the disturbing mind of the eccentric 18th-century artis...
The Artist’s Studio: A Cultural History – book review
Hall’s accounts of the changing nature of artists’ studios from Greek antiquity onwards are enth...
Marina Strocchi – interview: ‘I quit regular employed work to focus on...
An internationally recognised artist in her own right, Marina Strocchi has also spent many years in ...
H’arts in Mind: Drawing Our Way Back to Health
Paying lip service is not enough. The artworks in this exhibition, made by members of the mental hea...
Adrian Ghenie: The Fear of NOW
Two new series by the history-fixated Romanian painter Adrian Ghenie see him tackle the woes of the ...
Shi Jinsong: Waiting for a response which we might never get
With his tree motorbikes modelled on Harley-Davidsons and bamboo fashioned from metal, Shi Jinsong s...
Stephen Willats: Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs
In the 1970s, Stephen Willats worked with four socially disparate tennis clubs in Nottingham in a pa...
Harold Cohen: The AARON Retrospective
Could one human’s lifetime of artistic knowledge be encoded? That is what Harold Cohen set out to ...
Helen Saunders: Modernist Rebel
One of only two female members of the vorticists’ group, Helen Saunders' work was later sidelined....
Hans Ulrich Obrist and Peter Pakesch – interview: ‘The work of Atta Kw...
The artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries and the director of the Maria Lassnig Foundation e...
Kate Groobey – interview: ‘The drip, for me, is pure joy and a kind of...
Kate Groobey talks about bringing her paintings to life through performance, diverse cultural and li...
-2021-(medium-res)-300.jpg)
Gabriel Orozco: Diario de Plantas
During the Covid-19 pandemic, reflecting his concern with the fragility of our environment, Gabriel ...
Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces
Linda Goode Bryant’s gallery and experimental space gave prominence to black artists and artists o...
Sámi Pavilion (Nordic Countries), Venice Biennale 2022
Sámi artists Anders Sunna, Máret Ánne Sara and Pauliina Feodoroff have transformed the Nordic Pav...
Hollow Earth: Art, Caves & the Subterranean Imaginary
Nottingham Contemporary takes a richly rewarding descent into the art of the underground: a place fo...
Lucian Freud: New Perspectives
This thought-provoking exhibition attempts to shift our attention away from the myths that surround ...
Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness
Women and plant forms are intertwined among primal patterns and symbolism in Kamala Ibrahim Ishag's ...
Jorge Tacla: Stagings/Escenarios
The 1973 coup in Jorge Tacla’s mother country and the brutal dictatorship of General Pinochet that...
Dindga McCannon – interview: ‘Not having money never stopped me creati...
With a 50-year career as an artist and teacher, Dindga McCannon is widely celebrated in the US’s b...
Anna Freeman Bentley: Make Believe
Anna Freeman Bentley’s sensuous paintings evolved from an informal residency on the set of The Col...
Copyright © 1893–2022 Studio International Foundation.
The title Studio International is the property of the Studio International Foundation and, together with the content, are bound by copyright. All rights reserved.
 |
 |
 |
|---|
Beth Fisher: Grisaille Legacy
Artists’ Laboratory 02: Stephen Farthing RA – interview
ARC: I Draw for You
The 43 Uses of Drawing
Book review: One Thousand Drawings by Tracey Emin