Twitterview with Caitlin Griffiths

Caitlin Griffiths 'A Million Tiny Failures' Acrylic and ink on postcards (2011)

Caitlin Griffiths is an artist, curator and writer based in the West Midlands. Her own work experiments with stealing other peoples stories and representing her self as others - something she calls 'the cuckoo effect.' She has exhibited widely in the UK and Europe. 

Her other projects include Lamb White which takes advantage of technological advances in the difficult current financial climate to sell contemporary art in a fresh and innovative way. 

@BuffyDismorr 1st question...in your practice you talk about 'the cuckoo approach'. What exactly does this mean? 

@BusyCaitlin I ask people to tell me their memories - and then I write them with me in, instead. It's not quite as brutal as that!

@BuffyDismorr I see, so like a 'cuckoo stealing nests' so to speak? 

@BusyCaitlin Absolutely! I guess it's a way of me to work out who I am and who I'm not by putting myself in other people's (nests) shoes. 

@BuffyDismorr What projects are you currently working on? 

@Busy Caitlin I'm working on new paintings for a new exhib in Sweden http://www.wipsthlm.se/ and I also run @LambWhiteLtd 

@BuffyDismorr can you tell me a bit about @LambWhiteLtd? I think that the internet, ie social media & websites can be v beneficial 2 artists! 

@BusyCaitlin @LambWhiteLtd's a mechanism for new ways of curating, commissioning, distributing, selling the best new art, using technology. 

@BuffyDismorr I definately agree that technology (with our constant use of the internet, iphones etc) can help artists distribute and promote work! 

@BuffyDismorr I really like the look of your postcard project 'A Million Tiny Failures' - what inspired you to set up the project? 

@BusyCaitlin That was actually inspired by quite a raw emotional period in my life - I was suffering from depression though I didn't know it...

@Busy Caitlin ...and was looking back to people and times in my life when I thought things had been 'better'...

@BusyCaitlin...people have since pointed out that the pin pricks are like a 'safe' form of self harm and it's a motif I've continued with

@BuffyDismorr I can see that - I wish I had seen the show @TROVEart. I know the Midlands has a vibrant art scene...

@BuffyDismorr I don't know that area of the country well. Which art spaces would you recommend I visit? 

@BusyCaitlin There's a lot going on up here! @FRAME_brum launches this month, @TROVEart of course and the AMAZING @supersonicfest in Oct

@BusyCaitlin then there's the big institutions @Ikongallery @BM_AG and slightly out town @mac_birmingham and @_the_public

@BuffyDismorr Can you tell me if there is a practioner whose work you often return to for inspiration?

@BusyCaitlin There's a huge legacy of women artists interested in remaking existing work - or re-presenting themselves as others...

@BusyCaitlin...Catherine Sullivan, Gillian Wearing (of course!), Oreet Ashery and @Miranda_July

@BusyCaitlin I could go on! 

@BuffyDismorr Ha! I will look them up. Last question....

@BuffyDismorr ...If you could be remembered as one thing would it be either as an artist, curator, or a writer? And why? 

@BusyCaitlin That's a really hard one! Maybe as none of them - maybe as a singerdanceractressmodel: http://ow.ly/i/Yjm5


Thank you to Caitlin for taking the time to take part in my twitterview - I really enjoyed it! 


You can find out more about Caitlins work by looking at her website here

"Here's One for the Collection" Postcards and the Importance of them in my art

    Deltiodogy, or the collecting and studying of postcards is one of the most popular hobbies in the world.  From the beginning of its existence the postcard was a collectable item, as it is small, cheap and readily available, thus lending itself to different collecting strategies. From the start of the postcards creation in 1902 artists have gathered picture postcards for inspiration. Many artists, such as Susan Hiller, Richard Hamilton and Joseph Beuys (to name but a few) have used the postcard in their work in a variety of forms, ranging from specially designed multiples, to interventions into existing cards.

   I have been interested in postcards for a number of years, although for a time I did not think of them as being important to my practice. I have always collected postcards and I am drawn to them because of their personal and intimate nature, a stark contrast to manner of communicating via the internet. In the small postcard sized paintings I have ended up creating in the last year of the MA, their size helps to recreate the intimacy of the postcard. The artist, Roxy Walsh has spoken of a similar love of handwritten letters and postcards and how they also influenced her into producing series of small, intimate paintings.

    My interested in postcards and seeing it as a art form in its own right began in late 2009 where I began a mail art project on the theme of ‘Phobias’. I decided on the theme as I thought it was a topic broad enough to interest most mail art artists, friends and family. I publicised the project with a blog and on the ‘International Collection of Mail Artists’ website. I received over eighty postcards, and the collection was exhibited at the National Centre of Art and Design in Lincoln in early 2012.

(Detail from the Phobia exhibiton at the National Centre of Art and Design)

    I displayed the collection in a critique in the March of 2011. I received generally positive feedback from this session, in particular from the visiting artist Mark Dean, who liked the link he saw between my interest in collections and categorising and in my background in Archaeology. Despite this feedback I did not know how I could pair this interest with my painting practice, or with my interest in exploring the theme of women and madness within art.

Whilst working on the ‘Phobias’ mail art project it was the accumulation and then the final collection of the postcards and the grouping and organising of that final collection that I enjoyed, more than the individual works themselves. It was the notion, as with many collections that the whole was worth more than the sum of the parts. Although it took months for me to realise, my interest in collections and more particularly postcards, and my interest in painting the natural conclusion to this was by painting postcard sized paintings. In turn I believed my paintings were interesting alone, but they became even more interesting if I created a number of them.  There were no restrictions to how many I could paint, apart from my budget into the cost of materials.

   My interest in postcard sized work and in collections also extended into organising a fundraising exhibition for the MA Fine Art show which was held at Motorcade/FlashParade gallery in Bedminster. For the fundraiser I asked artists of all disciplines to donate a postcard sized piece of work with their name hidden on the back which was then sold at a set price.  The exhibition generated over one hundred and seventy postcards being donated. The art works were all made from different mediums; some were intricate in design, others seemingly simple. For me, my interest extended beyond the exhibition itself, but also from the act of the artists sending the works through the postal system, and my excitement in receiving them. I, in turn was happy to donate postcard sized work for other artists fundraising events, including an online auction at the University of Lincoln, and another auction at Transition Gallery, London. I enjoy the act of reprocity and exchange that artists postcards have.

(Installation view of 'Six by Four' at Motorcade/FlashParade gallery)