Thursday, 4:00pm
12 June 2025
Blood lines
Catherine Griffiths: Out of Line
19 May – 27 June (extended from 6 June) 2025. The Design Gallery, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, Australia. Curated by Ela Egidy and Megan Patty. Reviewed by John WarwickerJohn Warwicker reviews a poetic exhibition in Melbourne by designer Catherine Griffiths
It is always interesting to see a graphic designer transcend the constraints (scale, material and form) of their commercial practice, writes John Warwicker. ‘Catherine Griffiths: Out of Line’, skilfully curated by Ela Egidy and Megan Patty, does not disappoint.
The best of the transcendent work, for which Griffiths is author rather than responder, includes 7/7, 14 views (2023), a site-specific, architectonic work, seen in the background of the main photograph, above. Out of Line (2025), in the foreground, is site specific – shaped by the architecture of the space. The changes in ambient light constantly affect the reading and experience of its form. The two panels to the far right document Griffiths’ Light Weight O, #1-2 (2018), a mirror-faced, brass-backed 2.4 metre circular sculpture suspended above O’Connell Street in downtown Auckland, in Griffiths’ home country of Aotearoa New Zealand, that gently pivots, creating new vistas for the observer to consider in relation to the built environment.
As co-curator Egidy writes in her catalogue essay, ‘The Shapes and Sound’, Griffiths’ work ‘accentuates the subtlety and precision of form while embracing material instability and unpredictability’.
Top. Exhibition installation photo by Tobias Titz, 2025.
Right. For the Wellington Writers’ Walk (2002-04), Griffiths created three-dimensional type, here an excerpt from a Denis Glover poem, for a series of sculptures along the city’s waterfront. Photograph: Bruce Connew.
Each work requires a different mode of reading, as they each exhibit a different poetic experience, a difference intensified by the close proximity of works in the exhibition. Another highlight is the photograph of a text sculpture, one of fifteen large-scale concrete text sculptures (2002 and 2004), located in the Wellington Writers’ Walk. These text sculptures (which I’ve had the pleasure of encountering in situ) are for obvious reasons not physically present in the exhibition.
Light Weight O (2018), Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Photos by David Straight.
Griffiths’ text work A whakapapa, two lines of women. In the foreground, Out of Line (2025), nylon builder’s line. On the floor, Club de Conversation Keyhole #5, l’Inconnu (2012) a hand-tufted wool rug. Photo: Ingrid Rhule.
A whakapapa, two lines of women, is a 5.4m typographic work, a genealogical map of Griffiths’ English / Maori heritage that demonstrates both intellectual rigour and typographic acumen. This includes the names of women over five generations descended from a shared ancestor who had eight children, seven with his English wife, Ellen, and the youngest, Rangimarie, with Te Rongopamamao of Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Kinohaku. Rangimarie became a renowned weaver. ‘The repeat pattern introduces the “W” patterns found in weaving and wall panels, and makes reference to the korowai, the cloak,’ says Griffiths. The work symbolises a reunion between the two sides of the family. For more about this complex work, see A whakapapa, two lines of women on Griffiths’ site.
The rest of this diverse and stimulating exhibition of Griffiths’ work educates and delights, but the works shown here are (for me) the outstanding highlights.
John Warwicker, designer, Tomato, Melbourne
Exhibition installation from above, 2025. Photo: Ingrid Rhule.
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