Delusions of Grandma
Kit Griffiths
13th April 2024 - 26th May 2024
“Is it possible that you do not have to be understood to be loved?”
Delusions of Grandma is the culmination of my past 3 years' work, since I asked myself this question, and then returned to and chose my birth family after various estrangements. While I had not spoken to my Nana in almost two years, it was my parents I had lost and missed for the longest, my parents I had moved away from both physically and emotionally.
Above all other people in my life, it was them who had taught me how to love. Dad with his quieter devotion - saving up to take us to art galleries and museums before they were free - and Mum with her daily blazing love - telling me I could do anything and was born to save the world.
To quote the Stereophonics, “You gotta go there to come back”. I believe I did have to leave home - I had to know that I could leave any and all of my relationships - in order to fully choose them, and so cherish them. Maybe that’s my way of accepting the time lost, but whatever - to quote the best tattoo in the world, “NO RAGRETS” - we have the present moment.
I now invite you into a ‘hybrid home space’, created from pieces of memory, living rooms and a series of texts and artworks that centre reconnection. The works are mixed media installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, poetry/text and film stills tucked in a sketchbook you’re welcome to open. I hope you will enjoy my family portraits as much as I’ve enjoyed making them. I see my role in the world as a Mother rather than a Matriarch, so I've worked towards the goal of a playful and ultimately nourishing exhibition.
Kit Griffiths is an artist, film-maker and poet with 14 years’ practice centring intimacy.
Kit has exhibited painting and film at The Turner Contemporary Margate, Art Basel Hong Kong, Queer ART(ists) Now London and The Beaney Museum Canterbury among others, and has performed live at The Tate Modern, The Tate Britain, The Royal Academy, The Southbank Centre and Soho Theatre among others.
Awards include WINNER of ‘IDEA’ OFF-WEST END AWARD 2019 for ‘Sex, Sex, Men, Men' with Pecs Dragkings; WINNER of Best Short Documentary for ‘NASA, Merthyr Tydfil’ at Toronto Alt Film Festival 2022, and THIRD PRIZE in the Poetry Wales International Competition 2023.
Kit is a member of the Southbank Centre New Poets Collective 23/24 and is editing a full poetry collection which will include images from this exhibition, as well as a feature-length documentary which will include footage of performance inside the gallery.
Delusions of Grandma was begun with a DYCP grant awarded by Arts Council England, developed under the patronage of Paul Smith, and is now shared for the first time with the support of Quench Gallery Margate.
Project mentors include Caroline Bird, Vanessa Kissule, Will Harris and Rosalind Russell.
