Trash: Drawings and Paintings by Barbara Griffiths

TRASH
Drawings and Paintings
Barbara Griffiths
Atlantic Gallery, New York City

November 7-25, 2023
Opening Reception:
Thursday November 9, 6-8 pm

During the pandemic, Griffiths began to draw the uncollected trash piling up on the streets. When the homeless arrived, she was faced with the ethical dilemma of whether they should be included in the drawings. Now that we're more aware of human rights, should real people, especially the disadvantaged, be treated as aesthetic objects? These works provoke cognitive dissonance by presenting two highly charged subjects, waste and homelessness, without any emotional message.

Griffiths' subject became the gap between the artist and the viewer, the artwork and the interpretations the viewer might take from it.

Barbara Griffiths is an English artist who trained at The Slade School in London. She exhibited at The Lasson Gallery in London, then moved to Connecticut in 1995, where she made work about human nature, identity, and religion. Griffiths exhibited at The Silvermine Guild, Katonah Museum, Long Island Museum, The Greenwich Arts Center, and The University of Connecticut. To accompany an exhibition of Bible illustrations at The Fairfield Arts Center, Griffiths staged public debates with a Priest and a Rabbi; these questioned the existence of God. Her satirical Bible Stories for Children won praise from Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris and was serialized in Skeptic Magazine, U.K.

Four years ago Griffiths moved to Brooklyn. Her self-portrait is featured on the NYAC 'Curated Shows' page, and her work was included in the online exhibits Lost & Found, and City Life; also in the annual Connections exhibitions and Causality at The Atlantic Gallery, Art Over Time at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists' Gallery, and Women Celebrate Women at El Barrio Art Space.