Matlok Griffiths in conversation with B. Wurtz
March 10, 2026

For this episode of the Selection Committee Radio Show, former guest B. Wurtz joins me in conversation with Matlok Griffiths, an artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Both artist-musicians, the two first became acquainted when Griffiths approached Wurtz to do a book project with his imprint Tutto. This began an ongoing conversation about art and music between the two that we get to join.

Griffiths’ wonderful exhibition “And My Unnamed Corners” recently closed at Gordon Robichaux in New York City. The show featured a selection of modestly scaled paintings on sculptural canvases as well as a series of gouache paintings on crossword puzzles. We discuss the New York connection to this work—in 2016 Griffiths spent four months in the city doing a mentorship with painter Stanley Whitney. He began picking up free newspapers and using the crossword puzzles as a found grid to make gouache paintings. Through time and inspiration these crossword paintings found new form in the sculptural canvases.

The conversation also touches on his ceramic practice which began when a neighbor gave his family a bag of clay during Melbourne’s intense Covid lockdown. Inspired by a figure his daughter made of a girl sitting bolt upright in bed, Griffiths created an entire body of work that is a meditation on that strange time.

Throughout the program, Griffiths shares a semi-autobiographical set of songs including selections from his own band, Big Supermarket, formed with his wife Katrina and his friend Travis.

This three-way conversation is a window into a practice that is remarkably open to opportunities, collaborations, and the unexpected. It was a pleasure to spend the afternoon with Griffiths and Wurtz!

Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.

1. Old News, Big Supermarket, 2019
   
2. The Boy In the Bubble, Paul Simon, 1986
   
3. Blue Flowers, Dr. Octagon, 1996
   
4. Black Death, Big Supermarket, 2019
   
5. Lost Mi Love, Yellowman, 1982
   
6. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others, The Smiths, 1986
   
7. Frenz, The Fall, 1988
   
8. Loose Fit, Happy Mondays, 1999
   
9. Desire As, Prefab Sprout, 1985
   
10. Waterloo Sunset, The Kinks, 1967
    
11. Shadazz, Suicide, 1999
    
12. Diary of a Young Man, Television Personalities, 1981
    
13. Bottles, Samizdat & Michael J. Blood, 2023
14. Rinsed, Dean Blunt & TYSON, 2023
15. Peter, Big Supermarket, 2019
16. Big Jean, Big Supermarket, 2019

Matlok Griffiths (b. 1983, Perth, Australia) is an artist and occasional musician who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. He has presented solo and two-person exhibitions at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (2025), Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney (2022, 2019, 2107, 2016), and ReadingRoom, Melbourne (2024, 2022, 2018). His work has been featured in numerous group shows, including at Wolford House, Los Angeles (curated by Nichole Caruso-Siebers, 2024) and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2023).
In 2016, Griffiths completed a four-month mentorship with artist Stanley Whitney through the support of a Skills and Development Grant awarded by the Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia). His work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Artbank, Australia. In 2018, Griffiths released a music album, 1800, with his collaborators (Katrina Griffiths and Travis MacDonald) under the name Big Supermaket.

Born 1948 in Pasadena, California, B. Wurtz is best known for his playful and compelling sculptures constructed from discarded materials like produce packaging, construction lumber, and plastic bags. He received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in 1980. The sculptor and painter currently lives and works in New York, New York.
B. Wurtz's repurposing of everyday flotsam into joyous, humorous, and beautiful objects undermine grand artistic gesture while elevating the commonplace. The artist's transformative amalgams of found materials have tended to coalesce around the subjects of "sleeping, eating, and keeping warm"—the foundational human needs named in his 1973 drawing Three Important Things. While his sculptures are often modest in scale, in 2018, the artist created his now iconic Kitchen Trees for the New York City Public Art Fund, transforming City Hall Park with towering columns of colorful colanders exploding with plastic fruit.
Wurtz has been the subject of over 52 solo exhibitions at prestigious venues including: Feature Inc. (1987, 1991, 1992, 2001, 2003, 2006, New York); Gallery 400 (2000, Chicago); White Flag Projects (2012, St. Louis); Kunstverein (2015, Freiburg, Germany); and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, (2015, Ridgefield, Connecticut). In 2015, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom mounted a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work that traveled to La Casa Encendida, Madrid through 2016. In 2018, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles mounted a major solo exhibition of his work, This Has No Name.
His work has also been included in over 174 group exhibitions including: Pandora's Box: Joseph Cornell Unlocks the MCA Collection (2011, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago); Building Blocks: Contemporary Works from the Collection (2011, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence); and Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s (2018, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC).