An installation on an installation on an installation ...

»SOLO IN [ ] SPACE« is an ‘installation on an installation on an installation’—works made over time and space, reconfigured, re-contextualised and responsive. It is a marker, fragments from an evolving series of works, large and small, that span wide, shoot off on tangents, make sense on examination, where dots join and a typographic thread weaves—nothing comes out of a vacuum—a mapping out. This marker is first indicated through a window installation of white lines and circles: gestural, expressive, and with intent.

What appears abstract outside on The Space gallery window is revealed inside, pinned to the wall, an unfolded 4 metre long drawing »So far: a map of projects, a drawing« (2016). This mapping out of projects traces the interrelationships of common language (sound and graphic), spatial shift (public/private), and atmosphere (calm to chaotic), found across more than a decade of these conceptions.

This Shanghai installation came as a surprise. Although less so to be invited by Zhihua Duan, whose generosity I recognised at the 2017 Porto Design Summer School where I was guest tutor alongside Andrew Howard, Hamish Muir and David Pearson. As it turned out, Zhihua had already encountered my practice when I delivered a talk in Melbourne several months before, at the 2017 International Symposium on Typography curated by Brad Haylock (RMIT, NGV).

Months after Porto, and before SOLO was a glint in the eye, I was invited to participate in the Shanghai Art & Visual Design Exhibition. I installed »Work/ Space«, elements from my vowel-based installations, including a large-scale drawing of a recently deployed (in even larger-scale, eight metres tall) vowel work »Collidescape« commissioned for Te Kei, a new building by Athfield Architects at Ara Campus, Ōtautahi Christchurch. Then Zhihua beckoned, in his words, “… the show in my mind would be a space filled by abundant works,images, archives, and maybe also include sound and video, to make it as a< contextual or narrative space for visitors to read rather [than] a space to show a series of design results?”.

When I gaze back on the public lectures and workshops, installations and commissions over the past twenty years, I recognise each has come unsolicited, out of the blue. But always, there is context, a reason, whether past connection, chance encounter, series of encounters, or happenstance. Being receptive and open, being present and listening, with a focus on both the detail and wider picture, through the act of making, of doing, conveying.

From artist books (labours of love, self-published) to magazine and newspaper interventions (participatory); mixed media installations to private/ public art commissions (invitational, art-based practice); protest in-the-guiseof type specimen posters (self-initiated activism) to letterform construction and project mapping (investigative-based practice) … I resolved to treat »SOLO IN [ ] SPACE« as yet another iteration, an installation on an installation on an installation.

The exhibition extended a month into a late, golden Shanghai Autumn … and then Covid-19 struck, »SOLO IN [ ] SPACE«, a poignant and pertinent marker.

How to make sense of this journey? Stories for another time. This moment is for the post-exhibition book, a documentation, to launch at the 2021 UNFOLD Shanghai Art Book Fair.

In this book are five short essays — poetic, meditative, observational — by Leonardo Sonnoli (Italy), Liza Enebeis (Netherlands), Masayoshi Kodaira (Japan), Anastasia Genkina (Russia) and Scarlett Xin Meng (China). As well, from my archive of selected writing, Gregory O’Brien’s Body, Mind, Somehow: The Text Art of Catherine Griffiths for Art New Zealand’s 150th issue (2014), and a review of »AEIOU, a typo/sound installation« (2009) by curator, writer and researcher Dr Mercedes Vicente, give clues and insights into what simply cannot be gathered in this one space, this moment in time.

»catherine griffiths : SOLO IN [ ] SPACE« A documentation is another step in my practice.

Catherine Griffiths / September 2021