Huntington

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, 100 Parliament Street

Gareth Griffiths’s colourful hand-welded steel sculptures are made with the intention of catching people’s attention and drawing the viewer closer. Articulated around a repeated geometrical form unfolded within space, they typically balance on three points to create an impression of weightlessness. The titles of his works usually refer to characteristic Googie buildings or neighbourhoods, after the West coast American style of architecture that rose to prominence in the 50s and 60s. Huntington refers to Huntington beach and the surfer culture of the time.

Googie architecture was often used for commercial buildings – restaurants, coffee shops, motels, gas stations and bowling alleys – in order to make them stand out, the name ‘Googie’ originating from John Lautner’s coffee shop in West Hollywood. By using distinct features that included flowing lines, odd abstract cut-outs, upswept roofs, boomerang shapes and with the use of new technologies, these architects were able to design buildings that looked more like works of art, rather than simply functional buildings.

Gareth Griffiths is a Welsh sculptor who lives and works in Leeds, having studied Fine Art Sculpture at Leeds University (BA, 1999–2002) and Design at Leeds Metropolitan University (MA, 2004). He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 2015. Selected exhibitions are ‘Artists of the Future’, Degree Art, London (2016); ‘Corner of the Universe’, Artspace warehouse gallery, Los Angeles (2016); Fabrik Gallery, Hong Kong (2017); Au Gant Rouge, Beirut, Lebanon (2018); and Beaux Arts Mayfair, London (2018, 2019).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

metal, steel, steel sculpture, powder coated

Artist

Gareth Griffiths (1979 - )

Title

Huntington

Date

2020

Medium

steel, powder coated

Dimensions

height: 110.5 cm; width: 96.0 cm; depth: 31.2 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21

Provenance

The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 19 March 2021

GAC number

18950