The Kidd
Brian Griffiths

Brian Griffiths’ site-specific commission for Frome was created especially for now demolished Frome Amateur Boxing Club after it had been vacated when the club moved to new premises. Tucked away in a small alley within the centre of Frome, the boxing club was a modest piece of vernacular architecture – a single storey wooden building of simple construction. The building was both physically hidden from the general public by its location and had also been an almost private space for decades, known and used only by club members.

In Griffiths’ hands the history of the Boxing Club became just one narrative amongst many potential narratives at play within the building. Tents, kit bags and clothes were ornately tied to the structure of the building. The canvas objects were all altered and customized: the tents wore paintings of the universe or human brain like signage or illustrations from a ramshackle travelling museum, the kits bags and clothes had been dipped into bright dyes producing wobbly bands of Technicolour.

Those objects of travel, adventure and history created a tension that held the failing and faded building together as much as the building seemed to contain the objects and stories that were packed within it. Together they created a Russian doll of ideas stretching from a small building in Frome to the outer reaches of the universe in a mildly epic examination of an inexperienced individual in an unfathomably large and complicated world.