studio catherine griffiths

7/7, 14 views, 2023 (installation view) masked acrylic wall paint / photos: Samuel Hartnett

7/7, 14 views is an enlargement of one of seven drawings from Legs alphabet, a construct in seven weights (2014). Each drawing is a typographic set for 26 letters, ten numbers and punctuation, made by Catherine Griffiths, in which the weight of the forms is increased over seven intervals, drawing by drawing. The letters, numbers and punctuation that make up the set become progressively more abstract.

7/7 is the blackest weight in the set, rendering its composition no longer identifiable as letterform. Presented on Te Tuhi’s Project Wall as a large-scale painted work, the mass of forms assumes a fully abstract, almost architectural, quality. As the blackness closes in, 14 slits, slivers, and slots of light—views through are revealed, referencing the exchanges that take place between light and shadow, in stillness and movement. A collector of things, whether object, word play, image or sound, Griffiths brings attention to the details that she is witness to and draws on in her interdisciplinary practice. In discussing 7/7, 14 views with Andrew Kennedy, it’s clear that being immersed in the ngahere at her Karekare studio and home plays back into her work.

7/7, 14 views sits in reference to other works in Griffiths’ practice, including Sound Tracks (Hit the Wall, The Dowse Art Museum, 2012), Collidescape (Te Kei atrium, AraInstitute of Canterbury, Ōtautahi, 2018) and the pattern language of shared ancestry in ‘A whakapapa, two lines of women’ an installation drawing (All Lines Converge, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2016). The visual language of 7/7, 14 views makes reference to W in Black (2017), five weights and styles of a typeface in two algorithmic compositions made in supportof the 2017 Women’s March protesting the inauguration of the US president.

Legs was originally constructed as just 12 letterforms for the title on the cover of Bruce Connew’s artist book Body of Work, and in response to his series of photographs which investigates gender and sexual politics through the lens of horse-breeding.

Te Tuhi

03 other in(ter)ventions

TypeSHED11
an international typography symposium, Wellington, NZ

typ gr ph c
a series of compact workshops, Karekare, NZ

installations, exhibitions

Catherine Griffiths: Walk With Me
Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery, Auckland University of Technology, Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa NZ

Catherine Griffiths: Out of Line
The Design Gallery, University of Melbourne, 2025, Australia

Iterations/Alterations
Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, 2025, Aotearoa NZ

What is my threshold now?
Manifesto vs Manifest, PLATES #1, 2024, New York, USA

7/7, 14 views
Te Tuhi Project Wall, 2023, Aotearoa NZ

Self-preservation
Offering It Up, Adam Art Gallery, 2023, Aotearoa NZ

The Phone Book: Club de Conversation (2012): deconstructed (2019), suspended (2022)
Counterparts // Part one: Where To From Here?, No Vacancy, 2022, Naarm Melbourne AU

catherine griffiths : SOLO IN [ ] SPACE
The Space Gallery, 2019, Shanghai, CHINA

Work/Space
Shanghai Art and Design Exhibition, 2017, CHINA

A whakapapa, two lines of women, an installation drawing
All Lines Converge, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2016, Aotearoa NZ

Installation with mirror and line
transitionalfieldwork, an exhibition, 2016, Aotearoa NZ

only U know ...
collaboration, Lela Jacobs AW17 Auckland, and SS17 Paris collection, Aotearoa NZ + FR

Constructed/Projected
installation, Typojanchi 2015, 4th International Typography Biennale, Seoul, KR

The Tuwhare Poster Project
fund-raiser for the Hone Tuwhare Trust Writers Residency, Aotearoa NZ

memento :: motif
Proyecto de Arte Contemporáneo Alzheimer, Valparaíso, Chile

The Phone Book
a maquette, for the Club de Conversation project, Aotearoa NZ

Club de Conversation at S/F with Dino Chai, Auckland, Aotearoa NZ

Club de Conversation: Keyhole Series and Dials
rug series, Dilana Workshop, Aotearoa NZ

Sound Tracks
installation, The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, Aotearoa NZ

The Jets
short film, Paris, France

posters, protest, statements

The Best Design Awards
three posters, 2018, Aotearoa NZ

Labour of Love
another word-play poster, 2018, Aotearoa NZ

W in black
drawings in progress, 2017, Aotearoa NZ/FR

The Alphabet
front page takeover of the Sentinel & Enterprise newspaper for 26 days, Fitchburg, USA

The Brexit Series
a word-play poster series in response to Brexit, Aotearoa NZ

Raising the Flag
contemplative, suggestive — design unravelled, Aotearoa NZ

Protest Vessel 1/2 PRICE
a collaboration with ceramic artist Raewyn Atkinson, Aotearoa NZ

7/7: 14 views

Te Tuhi, Project Wall, Curated by Andrew Kennedy, 20 August – 22 October 2023

Presented on Te Tuhi’s Project Wall as a large-scale painted work, the mass of forms assumes a fully abstract, almost architectural, quality. As the blackness closes in, 14 slits, slivers, and slots of light—views through are revealed, referencing the exchanges that take place between light and shadow, in stillness and movement.

“In this stunning black Kline-like ‘drawing’ on the central Te Tuhi wall – designed by typographer and artist, Catherine Griffiths — we find a compact, blocklike rectangle of tightly packed, mainly thick vertical vectors, a compressed digital ‘forest’ of abutted descending painted bands derived from expanded letters of the alphabet, numbers, and punctuation marks. The emphasis is on peek-a-boo white slivers and vibrant, angularly intruding (or projecting) triangular edges. Graphically imposing, but not threatening, it rumbles with muscular tremulous energy.” — John Hurrell