Exhibition: Vivienne Griffin - Song of Lies

Bureau is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Vivienne Griffin, The Song of Lies. The exhibition is their fourth with the gallery, and will feature works in multiple media including video, sound, drawing, and sculpture.

On the lower level Griffin’s major video work, MERCY (2023), is screening. Made over the period of two years, this video is the culmination of extensive scholarly research and technical experimentation during the course of their PhD work at SARC, the Center for Interdisciplinary Sound Research in Belfast, Ireland.

MERCY is a video work in two parts. The first section is a text based video work allegorizing a collective unconscious nervous breakdown. The opening black and white text video consists of multiple voices communicating about disparate subjects. One voice describes the potential smell of a digital rose; another voice recounts a ten second video they viewed online; yet another is an internal monologue on speed.  

The second part of MERCY was made with Turing Institute researcher, lawyer and court advocate Cari Hyde-Vaamonde. Part two uses visual metaphors in a virtual world to describe complex systems in Cari’s research. For example, the maze describes black box Ai; the rubbish in the maze refers to datasets which are dirty. The stairways within MERCY refer to decision tree branching algorithms. Through this work the idea of the despotic binary is explored. The despotic binary refers to the binary on/off, yes/no, 0/1, that in some way explains the polarization of politics, and the echo chambers that exist online. However, within the sound, the text and the virtual world there is also a constant search for the emancipatory prompts within technology, machine, and human interaction. 

Upstairs, two objects are spot lit in the dimmed gallery: an automated harp emitting a mechanical score, and a low hung pewter incense burner. In The New Note, a clarsach (Celtic harp) is automated to self-play continuously throughout the exhibition with a programmed score, less melodic and more machine-like. A Heavy Metal Incense Burner reclaims a ritualistic object for  a secular space. This solid pewter incense burner was sandcast and hand made by the artist, supported by a chain, each link individually cast by hand. Frankincense incense will be burned throughout the duration of the show, this ancient aromatic tree resin, has been used for over 5,000 years. 

A small framed ink drawing of an ornate confessional box is accompanied by larger drawings developed using AI models trained on a dataset of Griffin’s drawings. Within the context of extractive capitalism and data capitalism, AI becomes both a resource and a self annihilating prophecy for the production of image making. The drawings are hand drawn on a large scale—a labor intensive process. The vacuous outputs of the Ai models are reconfigured by Griffin when they insert text phrases back into the drawings. Titles within this series Trusted Evil, Horror We Design, point to a  post-apocalyptic future paradise.  

Vivienne Griffin (they/them) (b. 1975, Dublin, Ireland; lives and works in London UK) received an MFA from Hunter College at City University of New York supported by a Fulbright Scholarship in 2009 and a BFA from Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork, Ireland in 2004. Recent shows and performances include Assembly, Somerset House, London, 2024; Doyenne, Ormside Projects, London, 2024; Quantum listening, Camden Arts, Centre with Ignota books, 2023; Transmediale, Berlin, 2023; Kings College Ai Festival, 2023; On Paper, ECHO, Cologne, 2022; Latent Joy, St Mary Le Strand, with Paul Purgas and invited guests, 2022; Poet Slash Artist at Manchester International Festival, 2021; the AGM in Somerset House, 2021. Exhibitions at Bureau include I should be doing something else right now (featuring Jenny Carson, Cian McConn, Kristen Jensen), 2017; She Said, 2015; and The Me Song for Now Here, 2013. Griffin won an Oram Award in 2021, and are a resident at Somerset House Studios, London. They completed a one year MPhil at the Royal College of Art, where they are now an Associate Lecturer and are a PhD candidate in music at SARC the Center for Interdisciplinary Sound Research in Belfast.

This exhibition has been supported in part by Culture Ireland.