Richard Grayson

W.S.I.N (Weird Shit In Nature) Video installation, objects and augmented reality 2020 - 2024	WSIN uses digital 3D modelling and animation to describe a world where the matter of culture/technology is seeping into the ‘natural’ world. Hybrid beings grow from plastic toys and crystals in rocky outcrops. The agents in WSIN might be hybrid nature gods, components of vast structures, certain forms of ' modern sculpture' , spirits of place, monsters, mutations, art-forms, scrap, antic forces, non-human intelligences, pollution, weird things that breed in the damp hollows of the internet of things. Things where boundaries between virtual and material, animate and animate, blur and shift.
W.S.I.N (Weird Shit In Nature) Collages and watercolours 2020-23
Possessions_inc 6 hour single screen video projection HD Stereo sound 2020	An assemblage of material from the online project and new footage into a single 6 hour work.
Possessions_inc A video and web project 2016-2019	From July 2016 Matt's Gallery, London, has been regularly posting episodes of Possessions_inc on its mailing list and website. Part series, part blog, part essay, part talking head, Possessions_inc. is an expanding exploration of: ideas of value, ways we invest in objects, the Bilderberg owl, animatronics, the mystery of Rennes Le Chateau, codes, fakes, oligarchs, the missing head of Philip K Dick, treasure hunting, M.R. James, the V.I.P. Lounge, drug smuggling, computer animation, animism, Pygmalion and the insurance industry.
Possessions_inc Drawings and watercolours 2016-2019	Animation and other drawings for the project Possessions_inc
By Our Own Hand Collaborative stitching project 2017-18	By Our Own Hand builds on Boredom is Always Counter Revolutionary as the basis of a collaborative project. Community embroiderers hobbyists and stitchers are invited to make their own work featuring an individual letter of this Situationist phrase by Guy Debord, which is assembled to form the full text on a banner scale. In association with Matt's Gallery and Wandsworth Council.
Boredom is Always Counter Revolutionary Cross stitch tapestry, gouache and computer generated patterns 2013-16	A needlework tapestry made between 2012 and 2015 consists of approximately 22,000 cross-stitches, spelling out 'Boredom is Always Counter-Revolutionary'. The phrase, Boredom is Always Counter-Revolutionary, comes from a text by Guy Debord published in the Situationist International Journal in 1962. This later became a popular graffiti during the May 1968 events in Paris. This phrase is the starting point for a series of tapestry designs in gouache, which develop numerous variations on the original design...more
Cosmic Joke Single screen HD video Stereo sound 19:40 mins 2015	The work is formed from the texts of jokes that refer to ways of understanding and modelling immaterial or abstract forces, drawn from scientific, religious, philosophical, psychological or political systems. The sections of the jokes are articulated and animated by a 3D modelling animation programme...more
Nothing Can Stop Us Now 5 screen high-definition video installation 2014	'Nothing Can Stop Us Now' features the song 'Stalin wasn't Stallin' memorably covered by Robert Wyatt on his 1982 album 'Nothing Can Stop Us', a record that has become an exemplar of a strand of politically engaged independent music which now seems to represent a model of engaged practice that is increasingly distant and impossible...more
The Magic Mountain Two screen high-definition video projection 2013-17	In 2012 the French mountain village of Bugarach became a focus for millennial speculation triggered by the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21st 2012. The mountain had already featured in alternative narratives linked with the Cathar Heresies and lost Templar treasure. It also played a role in speculations to do with Jules Verne, hollow earth theories and was rumoured to have attracted the attention of both the Nazis and Mossad...more
Triumph (in collaboration with Steve Wigg) Wet clay on wood 4.6m x 4.3m x 2.7m 1996/2012	Originally commissioned by the University of South Australia Art Museum in 1996, sixteen years later, the artists are reprising Triumph in a new site specific installation at the Samstag Museum. Triumph was based on a 4.6 cm high paper-weight of the Arc de Triomphe bought by a friend from Paris...more
The Objectivist Studio Installation 2011	The Objectivist Studio is a work that uses texts from the writings of Ayn Rand (1905-1982) as its starting point. Rand was the author of the novels, 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'The Fountainhead' and the founder of 'Objectivism' - a philosophy that holds that 'the purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest.' ...more
The Magpie Index Single-screen high-definition video projection 68 Mins 2010	In 'The Magpie Index' legendary singer-songwriter, Roy Harper, delivers a series of monologues to camera. Each section addresses a different aspect of his work, his philosophy and history, covering the counter culture; religion and superstition; ornithology; nature and the environment; political engagement and the end of politics as well as Harper's experiences in the music world and the importance of changing light bulbs...more
The Banks of Torun 15 works Ink, pencil and watercolour on paper 29.7 x 42 cm each 2010	A series of watercolours of banks and financial institutions in the historic centre of Torun, Poland, made during a residency hosted by the Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu (CoCA), Torun and Fundacja Fabryka UTU...more
The Golden Space City of God Video installation 2009	The Golden Space City of God is a large scale video installation featuring a 26 piece choir singing an unaccompanied choral work. The libretto was developed from a website linked to the heterodox Christian cult 'The Family', a group who developed from the earlier Children of God of the sixties. This site, (which seemed to date from the late nineties and which has since disappeared) consisted of detailed predictions of events leading up to the end of the world...more
The Golden Space City of God Drawings 2009-10	These drawings, an adjunct project to the video installation The Golden Space City of God, are of the Golden Space City of God and of the buildings to be found within. David Berg, founder of The Family, gave precise descriptions of how they looked, their construction and materials, their size and functions and in some cases even their colour schemes...more
Colliders Digital prints 2009
Tombs of Christ Drawings 2006/7	The Tombs of Christ is a series of five pencil drawings of buildings, caves mounds and excavations all of which are believed to be the burial place of Jesus Christ. In traditional Western Art, the representations of the Tomb are different and various, but they all presume a singular historical site where the fundamental miraculous event of the Christian belief system - the resurrection of Christ - took place...more
Intelligence Three-channel video projection 2004-5	The star-charts are of individuals involved with the current Middle East situation - including the governments, the war on Iraq, the Palestinian Israeli situation and Al-Quaida, - including Tony Blair, George W Bush, Donald Rumsfeld. Osama Bin-Laden, Saddam Hussein, Ariel Sharon, Colin Powell, Yasser Arafat, Dick Cheney, Geoff Hoon Condaleeza Rice and so on. They represent individuals and groupings about whom people tend to have strongly held beliefs, or feel at least that they have some understanding of and the way that their actions are directly shaping our experience of the world...more
Intelligence Drawings 2004-5	Hand drawn computer generated commentaries and star charts of Yasse Arafat, Colin Luther Powell, Ariel Sharon, Condoleezza Rice, Saddam Hussein, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, George Herbert Walker Bush, Osama Bin Laden and Richard 'Dick' Bruce Cheney...more
Messiah Two-channel video projection 2004	In October 2003, Richard Grayson approached the Australian Country and Western Band 'The Midnight Amblers' to collaborate on a project re-arranging and performing the libretto to Handel's 1742 Oratorio 'The Messiah'. The dual projection video work Messiah is the end result. The text, written and assembled by Charles Jennens was created to support the idea that Jesus Christ was indeed the person anticipated by the Jewish prophets of the Old Testament, not an event that rendered such prophecy void...more
Suspicious Fires Digital prints 2004
Ghosthouses Two-channel video projection with spoken text 2003-4	Image and spoken text linking a ghost story by M. R. James, Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau projects, Giordano Bruno's Theatre of Memory, a museum of antiquities, and a website...more
Ways the World Ends Print series 2003	A series of print works which present predictions about how the world will end. One is from what we would consider a ‘mainstream’ source: an outline of what may happen in a few billion years by a couple of scientists who were reported on a CNN web site. Others come from sources that have a rather more meta-physical inflection...more
The Family Starship Troopers Video projection 2004	The text is from a prediction of how the world will end and how God will return (in a space city!) by a Christian cult organisation called The Family...The horizontal scrolling text is accompanied by snatches and samples from a soundtrack of Starship Troopers, a Paul Verhoeven movie where...more
Ways the World Ends Painting series 2002	A series of paintings which present predictions about how the world will end. One is from what we would consider a ‘mainstream’ source: an outline of what may happen in a few billion years by a couple of scientists who were reported on a CNN web site. Others come from sources that have a rather more meta-physical inflection...more
The Satanic Packaging and Advertising Initiative (SPAI) 2002	Performance with image projections at International Corporation of Lost Structures (ICOLS) Launch, MCA Sydney, Australia ...more
A Walk up the Hill in Six different Countries Single-channel video projection 2002	A Walk Up the Hill in Six different Countries is a sort of immersive video game pan through the landscapes of the Australian bush, breathlessly narrated by descriptions of the imaginary topologies of the Isle of Dionysis, Shangri-La, Narnia, and Utopia. Virtual landscapes that have been drawn from the experience of landscapes and which in turn shape and narrate our own understandings of the world...more
Negative Space (Things I don't understand) Painting series 2000	These are paintings of things that I do not understand. The title of the installation 'Negative Space', is a borrowing from life-drawing classes where you are instructed to describe and draw the areas where the subject is not (the triangle formed by neck and wall, the shape the carpet makes against the thigh etc), and through this process one ends up with an accurate deliniation of the area that the subject occupies. Can we achieve this sort of representation with concepts and ideas?...more
Ahistoryofreading Single-channel video projection 1999	'The idea for Richard Grayson's video, Ahistoryofreading, "came out of nowhere" (his words). He emptied the shelves of books in a New York studio - where he was staying -- arranged them for their witty title and cover association, and lined them up to be video-taped being pushed down, one by one..'...more
Alternative History Paintings Painting series 1998
Various things explained Single-channel video 1998	A video using articles on a dining table to describe: 1. How a nerve fibre works 2. Marx's theory of surplus value 3. How I split up with K 4. Lacan's theory of desire (mis-explained) and 5. Heresy...more
Triumph (In collaboration with Steve Wigg) Wet clay on wood - 4.3m x 4.3m x 2.7m 1996	Based on a 4.3 cm high paper-weight of the Arc de Triomph bought back by a friend from Paris, enlarged 100 times and built out of wet clay. It was at the same time Gigantic (compared to the model) and minute (compared to the Arc). During the period of exhibition the clay shrank and fell from the wooden sub-structure...more
Self Expression Newsprint 420mm x 597mm 1996	Commissioned work for front cover of the art magazine, Broadsheet, published by the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia...more
Work About The Real World Installation Potato print on paper 3m x 6.5m 1995	A series of potato prints, written in a way that requires a little decoding, of a 'fact'. The facts are seemingly significant, but in fact without 'use' merely of themselves, for instance 'Rain contains vitamin B 12', 'Freud couldn't read time-tables', ...more
Letter/Message/Fact Hammer drilled plaster wall 3.5m x 6.5m 1995	The text is an extract of a personal letter from someone else, enlarged, then hammer drilled into the plaster of the gallery wall...more
PRESUMED INNOCENT (PI) 1992-1995	Collaborative organisation based in Adelaide, South Australia
Belshazzar Hammer drilled plaster wall 4m x 3m x 2.5 x 4m 1992	Texts from two received letters. An extract of a paragraph from one, hammer drilled into the wall, and a single word ('solitary') carved into the facing wall...more
I'm taking control of your life by Grayson Industries Music, 10 tracks 1985	Grayson Industries Lyrics and vocals: Richard Grayson Music arrangement and production: David Barratt...more
50 Violent Acts Performance 45 mins duration 1984	The performance consisted of a series of seventy tableau vivants separated by extreme darkness. The images operated as a series of snapshots or frames from an hypothetical film in which images of tenderness were interleaved with those of failed communication and of implied power relationships...more
Three Real Things video 5 mins 1982	This video was a stand alone work as well a component of a series of performances which premiered in 'The Basement Group' exhibition at the Arnolfini, Bristol in 1982...more
Three Thousand Famous Men video 12 mins 1980	This video was a stand alone work as well a component of a series of performances which premiered in 'The Basement Group' exhibition at the Arnolfini, Bristol in 1982...more
THE BASEMENT GROUP Newcastle upon Tyne UK 1979 - 1984		Richard Grayson was a founder member of The Basement Group and Projects UK Newcastle upon Tyne. Between December 1979 and November 1984, the Basement/Projects curated organised and programmed over 236 events including their own individual and collaborative performances, in Newcastle and on tour...more