Dan Griffiths

b. 1983
Lives and works in Pontyclun and Cardiff, Wales

The City is at the core of my practice. I am the contemporary flâneur, wanderer and observer of postmodernity. Purposefully moving through the streets making fragmentary notes of my encounters with the chaos urban life.
My work explores Cardiff from my own perspective as a skateboarder, mapping my transient passage through the built environment. These unplanned performances, spontaneous drifts celebrate lived experience and seek chance encounter wherever possible. My journey finds adventure in the blandest urban expanses, actively seeking and playfully re-appropriating the concrete.
Skateboarders are being driven from cities by authorities that value capitalist gain over cultural fluidity. Displaced skaters are forced into purpose-built skateparks contradicting the ethos of skateboarding. The work explores the impact of these developments in the face of increasing urbanism and questions the ownership of public space.
A DIY punk aesthetic is important; these encounters are documented using unsophisticated hidden cameras, hoping to capture a naked glimpse of a city. The videos often displayed alongside discarded skateboard artifacts.
Experience in commercial design has fueled a fascination with constructed space, shaping my thinking three dimensionally. I’m interested in how design can develop cites for the better, eliminating banality and allowing its inhabitants more free time for creativity. Exploring how scale/proximity to objects/buildings alters our psychogeographical understanding.

The artist was in the following exhibition:
Barnraising & Bunkers

Links :
http://www.g39.org/warp/website.cgi?place=artists&id=2584