MATLOCK GRIFFITHS 'OUT OF TOUCH' JULY 2013

Image: Matlok Griffiths, Coffee Pot and Souvenirs from Exotic Locations, 2012,
acrylic on board, 39 x 29.3 cm

Chapter House Lane presents Matlok Griffiths’ ‘Out of Touch’ this July, with an opening
from 6-8pm, Thursday 4 July. It may be mid-winter, but new work by this exceptional local
artist is not to be missed.

Drawing on Griffiths’ love of the exotic and his heady suite of holiday ephemera, the collection
combines colour, line, abstraction and iconography to deliver pictures with punch.
In contrast to previous, painterly pieces, he alternates self-fashioned totemic instruments to
create lead-lined, brushed or scraped surfaces, amid which enamel, acrylic and oil collect to
tell his stories. Along with the best titles in the business, the images are steeped in
referential treats – amid which you’ll find a motley crew: Matisse, Guston, Hockney,
and Captain Beefheart.

The show title – apt in its physicality – comes from Ashley Crawford’s catalogue essay for an
earlier show ‘All these words keep getting in our way’: “Works that rely upon gut association,
upon things such as colour and form and, dare we say it, even emotion, are flagrantly dismissed
as out of touch.” Crawford writes. He suggests Griffiths’ work is an antidote to the disease
taking root in the art world – one that is spawned by academics and spread by bureaucrats’
bastardisation of philosophy. His assessment is Griffiths will be crushed.
But not by us. We are definitely on the dancefloor with him.

To see more from Matlok please click the image above.