Brian Griffiths

Brian Griffiths (born in 1968 in Stratford-upon-Avon) is a British artist based in London who uses his cavalier wit and imagination to transform everyday mundane objects, such as tarpaulin, charity shop bric-a-brac and cardboard boxes into the "the stuff kids dream of" - humongous teddy bear heads, monumental sea-faring and space ships, clowns, astronauts and pirates. Graduating from Goldsmith's College in 1996 (MA), Griffiths has developed an inventive but slapdash process of "making" that is critical to his artistic output, bestowing each material he selects with the innate ability to become a new experience or means of escape for the viewer. His work has been featured at solo exhibitions at the Camden Arts Centre, London; Vilma Gold, London; Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paolo; Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam; The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; A Foundation, Liverpool; Arnolfini, Bristol; and The Breeder, Athens. Important group exhibitions include British Modern Remade, British Arts Council, London (2012), British Art Show 7: Days of the Comet, Nottingham Contemporary, Centre for Contemporay Art, Glasgow, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery and Hayward Gallery, London (2011); Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, Tate Britain, London (2010), Nothing is Impossible, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2010); GSK Contemporary: Event Horizon, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2008), and Life/Live, Musee d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (1997). In 2011, Griffiths' first monograph was published by Koenig Books. In 2010, Griffiths was nominated for the Fourth Plinth Commission, Trafalgar Square, London. Brian Griffiths is also a tutor at the Royal Academy Schools and a part-time tutor at Camberwell College of Arts and the Royal College of Art.