Get Your Flu Jab!

It’s going to be more important than ever this year to make sure you’re protected against seasonal flu.

If you

  • are 65 and over (including those who’ll be 65 by 31 March 2021)
  • have certain health conditions
  • are pregnant
  • are in a long-stay residential care
  • receive a carer’s allowance, or are the main carer for an older or disabled person who may be at risk if you get sick
  • live with someone who’s at high risk from coronavirus (on the NHS shielded patient list)
  • are a frontline frontline health or social care worker

you are entitled to a flu jab. Your doctor’s surgery (list of Brent GPs here) can provide a flu jab in a safe environment.

Brent 2020 Biennial Art Festival – Map and Brochure

The Brent Biennial is now underway, with over 20 brand new artworks by artists such as Imran Qureshi, Dawn Mellor and Brian Griffiths. The library is hosting Brian Griffiths’ SELF – CONSCIOUS, which you can view every weekend between now and 13 December.

Brent have produced a leaflet and map to help you navigate the artworks. They will shortly be announcing walking tours – so check out the calendar for further details on the Brent 2020 site here: https://brent2020.co.uk/whats-happening/programmes/brent-biennial/

You can also download the brochure there.

SELF – CONSCIOUS

The exhibition has opened. Here’s a little glimpse of what it looks like.

Viewings every Saturday and Sunday, 1200-1600, until 13 December.

Brent Biennial – Brian Griffiths’ SELF – CONSCIOUS

We’re very excited to announce that, as of tomorrow, 19 September, the library will be open on Saturdays and Sundays, until 13 December, for viewings of Brian Griffiths’ installation, SELF – CONSCIOUS. Visitors may view the installation between 1200 and 1600 on Saturdays and Sundays, or by appointment.

SELF – CONSCIOUS is an artwork by Brian Griffiths at Cricklewood Library. Conceived as a parallel lending library of selected books paired with sculptures. The artwork is on view every Saturday and Sunday 12 – 4 pm, and by appointment.

At time of publication this new community library is not complete. SELF – CONSCIOUS will be installed and wait for the library to open before lending. SELF – CONSCIOUS is on view during this wait.

‘We are told that there is a tall wooden cupboard in Cricklewood Library, standing somewhat incongruous. This holds nine books and nine boxed, and therefore hidden, sculptures.

We are told when loaning one of these books a bespoke sculpture will be loaned for the same period, to be taken home.

We are told that at the end of the loan period, the sculpture and book must be placed back in the box and returned to the tall wooden cupboard, still standing somewhat incongruous.’

We are told that Griffiths has always loved a good story. He believes that stories help us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us become the people we dreamed of being. Lies that tell a deeper truth.

We are not told that the artist has his own agenda in the story. He may mislead or cover mistakes, to do anything else is not staying in character.

We are not told that Brian is concerned with point of view, experimenting in the persuasions and limits of a first-person narrator.’


“Since graduating from Goldsmiths College in the late 1990’s I have been making sculptures and object installations full of overblown theatricality and pathos.

I like to tell stories however clichéd and timeworn. I want to make art that is staged, always pretending. I value the dramatisation of space, and work to direct audiences both physically and imaginatively. Objects, images and characters become materials to be laid out and persuaded to perform. My approach to visual languages and genres feels like trying on ornate fancy dress – to be enjoyed, and changed frequently.

I think with things, they become vocabulary, a way to start. I am driven by a curiosity in objects and our complex relations with them – how objects come to shape us; how we use them to create meaning, to organize our anxieties and affections, to sublimate our fears and shape our fantasies’.

I make sculpture because it sits in the world with us, like us. For me, self and stuff is always mixed up.”

– Brian Griffiths