Date: Thursday 26 November
Time: 10:00 GMT
Duration: 1.5 hrs
Fee: £2
Graham Dolphin – Artist Talk
Graham Dolphin follows his first talk with a focus on his own practice.
Working across drawing, sculpture, sound and text, Dolphin’s work explores questions of self-identification and idolatry, including an ongoing series of pieces inspired by the memorialisation of deceased celebrities. He is best known for scrupulously reconstructing the shrines and tributes left by fans at sites associated with musicians and other public figures – full-scale fences, park benches and gravestones, painstakingly remade and covered in the graffiti, marker pen and ephemera of genuine devotion. Elsewhere, his obsessive transcriptions of song lyrics and record sleeves turn language and music into drawing, asking what’s lost – and what’s revealed – when something is copied by hand, over and over.
In this talk, Graham discusses the ideas and processes behind his work: the connections he draws between modern-day fan shrines and the pilgrimage rituals associated with saints and gurus; his ongoing interest in bands and figures whose visual identity is inseparable from their myth; and the collaborations that have grown out of that fascination, including with musicians and photographers he has invited to contribute directly to his work. Throughout, he returns to a central question: where does appreciation end and veneration begin?
Graham Dolphin is a British artist, born in 1972 in Stafford, UK, who studied painting at Bath School of Art. His work frequently explores the concepts of self-identification and idolatry, including an ongoing series of pieces inspired by the memorialisation of deceased celebrities. He is known for his meticulous and laborious art-making across a variety of media, including scrupulously reconstructing the shrines dedicated to rock stars that are popularised by fan communities. These works draw connections between such modern-day monuments and the acts of pilgrimage associated with saints and gurus in religious rituals, questioning the relationship between appreciation and veneration in art. His work has been exhibited at institutions including BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, the ICA, National Portrait Gallery, the Grand Palais, Somerset House and Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, where he presented a major solo survey show in 2016. Represented by Vane, Newcastle, Dolphin currently lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.
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