The Bill Griffin story is unique. Born in Cork in 1947 he left school at age fourteen to work in a small engineering supply company. He  subsequently got a job at the the Ford Assembly Plant in Cork city which was regarded as a life –time career but got himself fired soon after starting there. At twenty he moved to London hoping to pursue a career as an artist. He had very little success in this endeavour and very few sales. He went to work on a North Sea oil rig and then on to what was to become the Kinsale Gas Fields.

In the Oilfield, a known meritocracy, he rose through the ranks quickly and specialised in directional drilling techniques where he gained an international reputation. Widely known  as  ” Dog Leg Willie” he pioneered high angle and ultimately horizontal wells.

In 1980 funded by the American Auctioneer’s Company Max Rouse and Sons, Los Angeles, he refurbished two oil rigs that had been destined for the scrapyard. He operated these units in the Far East and Australia. For three years following a drastic downturn in worldwide drilling in the mid 80s he worked extensively as a consultant involved in rig design and layout for exploration and production facilities. He became involved in drilling concession negotiations and rubbed shoulders with such rare tulips as Colonel Muammar Gadafi and Saddam Hussein. He became Godfather to Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian President and former Foreign  Minister of the Soviet Union.

In 1998, disillusioned and upset at the destruction caused  by the  U N sanctions on the trampled population in Iraq he carried out a substantial study of the devastating  effects of  depleted uranium ammunitions ( Du-U238) used by the Allied Armies and its poisoning of the inhabitants. He organised a successful campaign to have this filthy ordinance banned as a Weapon of Mass Destruction and, although not utilised since, production of this deadly projectile continues. The ban was signed by Mary Robinson during her term as U N Commissioner.

This exhibition is Griffin’s fifty-third solo show. Of it Griffin said “ These works, layered over time are achieved through the multiple expression of various muses, a journey where random selection of material can  signpost direction, leading ultimately to a point of total completion. This point is where the work whispers ‘ I’m done’ and then goes silent on the artist and can only speak to others.”