August 4th 2014

When we first introduced Alison Griffin’s work back in the summer she was just two months out of Central St Martins. She’d already been selected for the Clyde & Co. Art Award to exhibit the leading piece in her degree show in a year long show that would travel around the UK, and I wasn’t at all surprised at this as the piece in question was in my opinion the best in the whole of the St Martin’s fine art end of year show. We immediately sold a few of the handful of works we released in the summer (we actually had two clients wanting the same piece in one case), which I always love as it means I’m selecting the right works but more importantly because it’s giving a young artist a break into the art world - the first few sales you make of your work when starting out are so encouraging.

The two new pieces out this week, The Last Place You Thought I Would Be Nr.5 and The Last Place You Thought I Would Be Nr.6 see the next step in Alison’s work as she starts to introduce more abstract elements into her otherwise very figurative drawings. Strips of monochrome patterned collage - created to look almost like wood-cut prints - slice vertically through her intricately drawn forest. A different paper is used to establish a distinct contrast in texture between the original drawing and these intruding cropped additions.

I’ll be honest; I was surprised when Alison first showed me these pieces. But having only known her work for a short period and only really seeing the works in her St. Martin’s show, who was I to predict what she had up her sleeve for her next body of work? They have hugely grown on me however. I haven’t spoken to her about her own ideas behind them, but my interpretation is that the patterns represent the artist herself, so the works become more autobiographically focussed. The titles of course provide this element first and foremost, and I love the way these titles are so important and can easily throw your thought process in the opposite direction in terms of what the work is about. “The Last Place You Thought I Would Be” suggests hiding - a game of ‘hide and seek’ perhaps, drawing again on childhood experiences, as previous works have done. Could the titles also refer to the unexpected strip of decoration? This retro pattern makes me think of home - the comfort of the pattern verses the cold and lonely drawing of the forest. Whatever she’s aiming to achieve with these works, I find them intriguing and in my opinion they make interesting pieces of art.

See Alison’s work, including the two new pieces, on Eyestorm here.

Creative Director