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, Ara Institute 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 support of 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.
→ Present Tense : Wāhine Toi Aotearoa—a paper record. book launch
About Catherine Griffiths
Catherine Griffiths is an artist, typographer and designer. Language, light and sound form recurring threads in her practice, with installations in public and private spaces, including the Wellington Writers Walk, a series of large-scale concrete text sculptures (2002, 2004) and her ongoing “Vowel” series, from AEIOU—a typo/sound installation (2009) to Light Weight O (2012, installed 2018), Tāmaki Makaurau. In 2019 she had her first survey show of selected works in Shanghai. A post-exhibition book catherine griffiths : SOLO IN [ ] SPACE, a documentation, was published in 2021. She has exhibited in Aotearoa, Chile, France, USA, China and South Korea.
Press
→ Review of 7/7, 14 views - EyeContact