Graham Dolphin

Born 1972 in Stafford UK

 

Working directly onto ready-made objects, such as vinyl records, album sleeves, advertising posters, Graham Dolphin arduously scratches passages of minute, immaculate text into their surfaces. The text can be a transcription of lyrics by that particular recording artist, perhaps just a few songs or as much as their entire back catalogue or in a recent series of works, a recantation of verses of the primary text, the Old Testament.

 

Dolphin’s practice involves meticulous manipulation of the ready-made, in particular mass produced and culturally loaded instruments. As Dolphin performs his intense acts of endurance, he defaces and destroys these objects as products, creating a new thing, with another set of fetishes and another set of rules. The scratched record is removed from circulation and broken, and simultaneously re-circulated and re-made.

 

The album covers are bent and bear the signs of familiar handling over years, and this suggests an intimacy with the artist; these are objects that have been owned, used, treasured. Dolphin’s choice of record at first seems a list of his own personal collection, until you come across four identical pressings of say, The Beatles, Help, reminding the viewer that these ready-mades are commercial, mass-produced multiples. Any history or narrative created by the specific choice of title is a false-hood and that the artist’s obsessive addition to these objects is one step removed. The works speak about obsession and idolization but don’t partake of it.

 

Dolphin’s hermetic, punitive practice uses displays of endurance and skill throughout. Previous works such as Every word in Vogue, 2004 (a text drawing listing every printed word and sentence in one issue) and 1500 Images of Kate Moss in 60 Seconds, 2001 (video installation) have utilized other devices such as magazines and catwalk runways that inspire similar obsession. Every Cosmetic in Vogue, 2005 (pictured above) is one of a series of drawing documenting each of a particular item in the magazine. His recent exhibition at BALTIC included two new video installations, a commissioned wall drawing listing 1000 song titles that are also questions and a sound piece sampling Hitchcock’s Vertigo.



Graham Dolphin, 11 Velvet Underground songs, 2007, Scratched 12 inch record