Graham Goddard
Conceptual Artist
Los Angeles, California
Web: GrahamGoddard.com
graham@grahamgoddard.com
Graham Goddard (born April 12, 1982) is a Trinidadian-American conceptual artist making visual statements about the environment, spirituality and commodification through painting, sculpture and site-specific land art installations. Goddard’s work has been exhibited at the Skirball Museum, the California African American Museum and numerous art galleries in the United States and abroad.
In 2003 Graham Goddard developed the Rotating Canvas, which allows the viewer to turn the painting 360 degrees, exposing inverted images within his work while exploring the nature of viewer interaction. He first introduced the concept in the exhibition “Flip” at the Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery in 2004. Today, as viewers insert themselves into the evolution of the imagery featured in the Rotating Canvas, the process viewing and interacting with the work can be seen as demonstrative of the continually transforming relationships between content and context in contemporary art. Goddard states, “The notion of dualities within the spectrum of dynamic relationships that emerge when the image is turned and disrupted is particularly interesting to me. I believe that the viewer participates in a pure and direct manipulation of the image, consequently unveiling a variety of aesthetic perspectives that inhabit the multidimensional landscape of the canvas.”
Graham Goddard’s interest in site-specific land art led him to create Paradigm, which is designed to investigate its surrounding environment as an object consisting of a process of ongoing relationships between man and nature, while addressing our ecological responsibility towards a healthy environment tomorrow. Graham Goddard places Paradigm in multiple locations that are at risk and affected by pollution, such as mountains, deserts and watersheds. The California African American Museum featured Paradigm in its exhibition, “An Idea Called Tomorrow,” in 2009. Goddard designed plans for the installation of Paradigm in the Ballona Creek, a toxic watershed in Culver City, California. Paradigm aspires to ensure that sites such as Ballona Creek are no longer seen as a “thing-in-themselves,” but instead as physical regions consisting of layered evidence of multiple issues that need attention and support so that they could become cleaner and healthier environments.
Goddard’s interest in spirituality and its connection to self worth and individual value led him to create the series “The Investigation of Purpose, Faith & Identity.” The series addresses text from the Book of Revelation in the Holy Bible while exploring the ideas of destiny, social exclusion, and faith in God.
