Image: Test Potato - Bethune, France 2017
Doors: 7:00pm, Free
Famous for his surreal depictions of workers, celebrities, and iconic 1980’s music album covers, this special evening with Brian Griffin, featuring the recent documentary The Surreal Lives of Brian Griffin (directed by Michael Prince, 2018) and Mogwai - Stanley Kubrick (1999) charts his remarkable artistic output over the past four decades.
This film night coincides with the exhibition BRIAN GRIFFIN: SPUD! at MMX Gallery, London which runs between 26 October – 8 December 2018.
Programme:
Mogwai - Stanley Kubrick (Directed by Brian Griffin, 4.26 min, 1999),
Music video for the band Mogwai. The lord of the manor gets poisoned when eating a potato.
The Surreal Lives of Brian Griffin (Directed by Michael Prince, 59 min, 2018)
Brian Griffin (b.1948) is one of the UK’s most influential and creative portrait photographers. Famous for his surreal depictions of workers, celebrities, and iconic 1980’s music album covers. ‘The Surreal Lives of Brian Griffin’ gained unprecedented access to Griffin’s entire photographic archive, and over five years recorded exclusive observational footage with Griffin at work in the UK, Europe and China. The films narrative intercuts Griffin’s recent high profile commissions with his remarkable artistic output from the past four decades.
“I think that Brian is one of the most interesting portrait photographers ever. His portrait photography belongs to another time. Portrait photography today is like so simple, so straightforward, so it seems that all photography portraits are alike. Brian is different and Brian has a craziness in him - a craziness in a way to see the world, and intensity that belongs only to him.”
Francois Hébel, Director, Les Rencontres d'Arles
Acknowledged for the extraordinary composition and lighting of his portraits, Griffin’s distinctive style was developed during his early career as a staff photographer at Management Today. Joining the magazine in 1972, Griffin’s unique approach, with his witty and surreal touches, changed the face of corporate portraiture forever.
During the 1980’s Griffin produced numerous album covers for artists such as Kate Bush, Iggy Pop,Echo and the Bunnymen, Ultravox, Siouxsie Sioux, Billy Idol, Joe Jackson and Depeche Mode. The stunning image which graced Depeche Mode’s ‘A Broken Frame’ album was later chosen as the cover of LIFE magazine’s ‘The World’s Greatest Photographs 1980 -1990’.