Chapter House Lane presents Matlok Griffiths’ ‘Out of Touch’ this July, with an opening from 6-8pm, Thursday 4 July. It may be mid-winter, but new work by this exceptional local artist is not to be missed.

Drawing on Griffiths’ love of the exotic and his heady suite of holiday ephemera, the collection combines colour, line, abstraction and iconography to deliver pictures with punch. In contrast to previous, painterly pieces, he alternates self-fashioned totemic instruments to create lead-lined, brushed or scraped surfaces, amid which enamel, acrylic and oil collect to tell his stories. Along with the best titles in the business, the images are steeped in referential treats – amid which you’ll find a motley crew: Matisse, Guston, Hockney, and Captain Beefheart.

The show title – apt in its physicality – comes from Ashley Crawford’s catalogue essay for an earlier show ‘All these words keep getting in our way’: “Works that rely upon gut association, upon things such as colour and form and, dare we say it, even emotion, are flagrantly dismissed as out of touch.” Crawford writes. He suggests Griffiths’ work is an antidote to the disease taking root in the art world – one that is spawned by academics and spread by bureaucrats’ bastardisation of philosophy. His assessment is Griffiths will be crushed. But not by us. We are definitely on the dancefloor with him.

Push pineapple. Shake a tree.

Courtesy of Blockprojects, Chapter House Lane is proud to announce that this will be Griffiths second solo exhibition at Chapter House Lane.  To see more from Matlok please click here.

Download the catalogue of works and the price list.