Transcript of Colwyn Griffith’s Interview with Glendon Gallery Assistant, Cristina Raimondo
September 26, 2006
It is my pleasure to introduce you all to Colwyn Griffith, who is presenting his exhibition, Eye Candy 3 at the Glendon Gallery. Welcome Colwyn.
Thank you, it’s great to be here.
Excellent. So Colwyn, tell us what inspired you to begin working with processed food.
When I was at photo school back at Dawson in the late-90’s (I’m dating myself already), I was working in a studio class there and we were shooting food, and we were cutting oranges and lighting them from underneath and getting interesting effects, and we were also using coloured gels and filters on the lighting systems, getting kind of interesting effects, and then I just thought, we don’t need to always use—we’re shooting food—we don’t need to always use filters because there are so many colours in food already. So I just started working with jello—chilling it, cooking it and chilling it—and then using it in sort of set ups with different materials like metals, glass and things like that, and I was just really attracted to the light that you could transfer through the products of gel, and then I expanded that with bubble gum and potato flakes and just put lights through them and photographed them as well at the same time, and just was interested in that aspect—not just in the light but also the chemistry involved with these heavily processed products. Eventually, I started getting more—doing photography in a more artistic sort of manner, like building my own little sets and then photographing them, and then it just sort of mushroomed out into what you see here in the gallery today. I also did a trip—I lived in Japan for a number of years after school and, just hanging around the gardens of Kyoto—these small gardens, miniaturized trees, miniaturized landscapes were really influential in my process of working.
And your pieces are really spectacular! So how did you create these landscapes? What was the process of actually putting together the physical part?
I just basically shopped—went to the supermarket and picked up some foods that looked to be heavily processed and colourful, and then I’d go back to the studio and try to build the program work that you see here in the gallery today. It would take some experimentation, working with sugars and syrups and potato flakes—what else have you got? Fruit rollups. So it’s like an artist who works with sculpture or painting, you know, you have to work with materials to get a grip or a handle on them, and then once—there’s a fair bit of experimentation at first—and then once you get the right combination of foods that work compositionally and that kind of can make the landscapes look like the actual place, physically speaking, then you know you have something and you go from there, and then it’s lighting after that, which I also light from 360 degrees around the setup.
In terms of the landscapes, how did you choose the Canadian scenes that you photographed?
Basically, I would call up the provincial tourist bureau—let’s say 1-800-GO-NEWFOUNDLAND—and they would send me the brochures and basically, what I would do is that I would lift the images from either the covers or from the other parts of the brochure that I thought were the images that I wanted to work with. Usually, a lot of the times it was the front cover, like with Western Brook Pond over there—it’s right on the cover of the Newfoundland brochure, and it’s a spectacular fjord. I’ve never been there, but I wanted also not to go there—I like to get the experience from the brochure and base my works on that kind of thing so there’s less…it’s a little bit more of a mediated experience.
I was actually wondering about that—why you chose to not visit the actual sites. So it’s the mediation—you’re doing a photograph of a photograph of a photograph.
Yes. And then, you know, the tourists go to the sites and take the same photograph that you see on the front of the brochure. So there’s this whole mechanical process of the packaged tour, of the packaged food—almost like a whole factory-based experience. So, you know, as a potential tourist, let’s say you want to go to Newfoundland and you’re from Windsor or something, and you call 1-800-GO-NEWFOUNDLAND, you get the brochure you go: “Ah! Look at that fjord, it’s unbelievable! I really want to go there!” So you set up the trip and you go, and then you get there and you take the same picture that was on the front cover of the brochure. I find that process kind of interesting. So there’s a repetition—a photographic repetition of the whole experience like the brochure and the going there and taking the same picture over and over again. Go to Niagara Falls anytime—probably right now there are 500 people taking the same picture of the falls.
Exactly.
Thousands every day.
So it’s that whole experience.
It’s neat—it’s kinda creepy, but it’s…
But it is [creepy], because in a sense you’ve got this simulated reality—you don’t even see the “true”reality because you’re seeing it through photographs and you learn to see it [the reality] through photographs. So that’s interesting—and it’s the same thing with tourism as well. Now, there’s definitely a playful side to your work, but there’s almost an underlying hidden message. I know that in your artist’s statement you mentioned that you’re exploring “food and its relationship to various aspects of culture and society”. Could you elaborate upon that? What do you think is happening to our world?
Well, yeah…the food…I mean, like I said, it’s all factory-based types of foods that have almost no relationship to nature whatsoever, and these tourist sites, although natural, like Niagara Falls is just a spectacular place, and it’s just amazing to go there and see it, but it’s just so packaged just like the food, and the packaged tours where you have an agenda, and you go see the falls and you take a picture in the same location, an it’s all commodified and controlled—it’s basically a factory experience, like an assembly-line experience, to use a term like that.
And there is a lot of excessive consumerism and manipulation as well.
Yeah, definitely a lot of that—and then the landscape is commodified as well. And it’s also used not just to sell tourism, but it’s also used to sell insurance—it’s used to sell everything—Canadian identity even.
So is that why you chose to do Canadian landscapes as opposed to something from the States?
Yeah, I wanted to do one from each—a location from each of the provinces to definitely hit home that message and shoot Niagara Falls and the Roche Percé because if you watch the CBC at night, when it closes and the CBC goes off air, they have the O Canada song and there’s an aerial view , almost like a God floating though—like his perspective over Canada, and you see Niagara Falls and the Roche Percé. You see the big wheat fields of Saskatchewan. I think you even see Lake Louise, and it’s just kinda like “This is Canada.” I just want to make a little statement about that.
That’s really interesting. And why did you choose to photograph the landscapes you created rather than mounting them?
Yeah…physically…it would be great if I were able to box them up and ship them around, but they were fairly large and I always had a small studio or half a studio in an apartment, so I never really could afford the luxury of having that possibility. Plus, I mean, photography gives an extra sort of layer of plasticity or distancing from the food and the landscape and I think that gives you a little bit more of a sense of alienation. As opposed to just going up and looking at maquettes—I just like that separation and the idea of the postcard as well, where instead of going to the place…well, it’s photography anyways—it’s all mediated experience—and that’s what I’m trying to get at with this project.
So you’re creating this distance between the people and your pieces.
…at the same time it was physically impossible for me to…I didn’t have the space, didn’t have the money. It would have been nice to be able to keep my sets, but I just couldn’t do that—it was just not possible.
Do you have photographs of the full sets—of the process…how you built them?
Yeah…I have video as well…of the destruction of the sets.
Oh really? That’s interesting.
I have a whole archive of that. Just taking apart Peggy’s Cove—ripping it to shreds—it’s like a reverse process. I kind of needed that for my own cathartic feeling, because when you build these sets—it’s like those guys that put the ships in the bottles—it’s like an insane kind of little handiwork that takes lots and lots of time and I kind of like mucking about with the materials. It gives me a good sense…but often after working on it for a couple of weeks, you kind of want to see it out of the house, you know?
You want closure.
…so destroying it is part of that too… so I enjoy that.
Although your 2005 exhibition Empire continues this experimentation with processed food, I noticed that you’ve moved on to photograph diners and restaurants with Reclamation, and then you’ve done some product photography as will with Dollar Store. Can you tell us a little bit more about your recent ventures and why you have this progression from almost disguising processed food in these landscapes to then actually revealing the product in the package.
Okay. The Reclamation series and 476AD, they’re sister projects—very similar—so I’ve been photographing old McDonald’s that have been going out of business…KFC’s and things like that—big multinationals basically, that are very ubiquitous here, in the United States and in other parts of the world. So I photograph things that go out of business and are boarded up—that’s the 476AD series…that was the so-called year that the Roman Empire fell…and the Reclamation part of it is when small businesses move into this architecture and set up their own businesses, keep the façade of the building, but paint it up and give it this whole vernacular type of aesthetic that you don’t often see with McDonalds when they are functioning and stuff. I like that idea. It’s a total fiction, because in reality, McDonalds, WalMarts, are growing and growing and they are everywhere, but it’s like an “imagine if they went out of business”—so it’s a total fiction…a dream maybe. So the reclamation process is when they move in and have these beautiful places. I actually go and meet the owners and ask them about when they bought the shop and how they got involved with it. It’s a kind of good thing. It’s also therapeutic in the sense of getting out of my studio. Doing these sets…I get a little bit crazy…frustrated sometimes. It’s good to get on the road. I basically see these sites as factories—factory food sites. They are working architectural pieces of art history, basically, and so the Reclamation stuff will be printed large, and then the dead McDonald’s or the dead sites will be underneath. It’s kind of like an anthropological sort of survey where you have something like an empire on one level, it dies, and then another society moves in.
Takes over…
…again and again…so there’s that sort of anthropological perspective on that project.
It’s a regeneration almost as well.
Yeah, yeah. It’s like when the Roman Empire fell, people moved into the architecture and used it in different ways that they never actually thought…plenty in Africa as well…there were designs by Belgians and English—they thought people would be using the architecture a certain way and they it was used in totally different ways that blew their minds. I really like that chaotic…well not chaotic, but that less planned aspect of humanity, because in our society everything is so greatly controlled, and I like to see that little bit of collapse and fall and regeneration. I think it’s very exciting. Kind of hopeful. It’s not all controlled by somebody in head office in New York City or somewhere else.
Now how about Dollar Store?
The dollar stuff is a work-in-progress. Yeah. I’ve been shooting dollar store stuff for a very long time and I finally figured out kind of what I want to do with it. And it’s using language kind of games—nouns, verbs, adjectives, and also not just linguistics but also the history of commercial photography, so I’m using portrait-style techniques, commercial product photography techniques…might be doing some sports photography, like you have the track runner jumping over the steeple or something, you have a product doing that. Giving it kind of human aspects, like how we—is it anthropomorphize animals? Like we give them names and collars…like a spike collar you give to your cat or dog…you project that onto animals. Products in these dollar stores are so ubiquitous and they’re in our homes and, you know, everyone has them. Why not give them that, you know, personal, weird sense? So I’m experimenting with that and hopefully I’ll have a respectable show by the time it’s all said and done.
And in terms of Eye Candy 3, why did you choose to remount this exhibition, rather than going with some of your more recent works?
The main reason is that I’ve never shown this full body of work here in Toronto. I’ve only ever shown a few pieces here and there and I really wanted to put the whole body of work on. And… I sent this submission a couple of years ago to the gallery here, and they had renovations, and it took a long time, so I kind of like to follow through with the program.
Well we’re very happy to have you here.
Great, well thanks so much for having me!
Thank you for the interview! Colwyn’s exhibition Eye Candy 3 runs from September 27th to October 27th at the Glendon Gallery.
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