Keyhole #1

Catherine Griffiths

This collaboration with the highly talented typographer, designer and artist Catherine Griffiths has culminated in the Club de Conversation Keyhole Series. 

The series is a collection of seven French phone numbers, derived from the hundreds of tiny papery objects Catherine collected over a ten year period around the streets of Paris. In her words: 

“Scale, context and proximity are re-defined in this series. The public display of private information is super-enlarged and abstracted into the keyhole motif, a voyeuristic entry point into that person's world, the number never wholly revealed.”

ALZHEIMER ARTE COMTEMPORÁNEO / Alzheimer Contemporary Art Project PARQUE CULTURAL DE VALPARAÍSO

As a rug, the intrigue of the keyhole shape allows for casual placement in a variety of spaces. Regardless of the surrounding floor scale this shape will always find a pleasing position. 

Keyhole #1 is the last rug in the first edition of the series made at Dilana’s Christchurch workshop. 

”the Dilana tradition of hand-tufted wool rugs is one of skill and craft that honours the artists they collaborate with. Looking back on Dilana’s history since 1981 (just a few years years before I graduated from Wellington Polytechnic in 1986), they were ahead of their time, with a vision and generosity that I have been fortunate enough to witness with my own Keyhole Series. I recall first encountering Robyn and Hugh when the workshop was in Salisbury Street, back in the late 90s, where they were hand-tufting enormous artworks in pure wool. Extraordinary. So it was with great surprise when Hugh approached me about ten or 12 years later to look at making a work together. That’s when I proposed the Keyholes, and we began by testing the rendering of handwritten and typed French phone numbers with the Dials — circular rugs, a metre diameter. We were able to test achieving the photocopied textures in one or two of the works, and the rich jet black in others, together with off-white colours of pure wool. We spent time looking at how the designs would run over the edges in the three-dimensions, as if to bleed in their two-dimensional form. The thickness of the rug, and the surface, the cuts for precision and change of surface. Subtle but important details that Hugh brought to the equation. And later, the shift to a process offshore, and to hold onto what is so very special about the hand-tufted Dilana Workshop edition. I love the testing process, and the dialogue we have had, over many years. Now, encouraged by Hugh, I am preparing the next series “

Catherine Griffiths

Keyhole #1 | Catherine Griffiths

Limited edition of 5

hand tuft | 100% NZ wool

pile weight | 2500 grams per m2

size 200 x 100cm

price: $3570