Exhibtion Review:

On the Last Afternoon: Disrupted Ecologies and the Work of Joyce Campbell
Curated by John C. Welchman
27.07.19 – 20.10.19 

Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, NZ 

On the Last Afternoon: Disrupted Ecologies and the Work of Joyce Campbell, is a substantial presentation of New Zealand artist Joyce Campbell’s photographic practice, currently at the Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi in Wellington New Zealand.  Curated by LA–based contemporary art historian John C. Welchman, this exhibition examines Campbells works over three decades and unfolds her reflection on the interconnection of physical systems.  

Installation View of L.A Botanicals (left) and After it Falls (right)

In dialogue with the architecture of the gallery, this exhibition illustrates the variety of approaches Campbell has taken to her chosen subjects. As it Falls (2018-2019) engages directly with the space and scale of the south-eastern wall. The work, like the wall, cuts through all three floors of the gallery. Long unframed resin–coated photographic scrolls of multiple exposures, photograms and films strips hang loosely from the matte black wall.  Exploiting the full height of the building this work is visible on all three levels from discrete viewing platforms. The work is never seen in its entirety from one position, shifting the space and focus from close–up details to overall effects. The impact of this installment strategy creates a vertiginous cascade of fractured elements. This treatment articulates to a larger network similar to the root systems from bacterial colonies and crystal structures depicted in the photographs. Branching out into the different levels of the gallery like vines creeping across the floor, the scrolls seem to take on a life of their own, mirroring the organic systems present in her other works such as L.A Botanical (2006 – 2007). 

As it Falls, Joyce Campbell

Joyce Campbell’s L.A Botanical, is a series of ghostly negative images of poisonous flora on square glass sheets mounted on a matte black shelf. The shelf extends as an L shape into the corner of the gallery space opposite After it Falls, subdividing the white walls, again disrupting the white cube. The photographic images shift as you walk past, looming in and out of the darkness like phantoms alluding to the spiritual nature of early photography. There is a sense of mortality associated with plants, specifically flowers, which are favored by poets, painters and photographers as a metaphor for the passage of time. These photographs carry a sinister reminder of the power of plants to sustain or take life. L.A Botanical in comparison with As it Falls is a structured composition, each glass plate is evenly spaced at the same level.  This controlled approach connects to ideas of categorization and agriculture which is reinforced in the title.  

L.A Botanicals, Joyce Campbell (Installation View)

Campbell’s prints in After the Fall have been organized to produce a series of purposed and latent connections between her various bodies of works by acting as visible tethers that branch out through the gallery. The imagery of organic systems is present throughout the exhibition and is evidence of the artist’s investigation into morphogenesis – the biological process by which organisms develop form. She shifts scale from the microscopic close–ups present in After it Falls to the larger focus of the herbarium in L.A Botanicals to give visible form to the beauty, complexity and perseverance of endangered life.  Campbell ‘believes in the potential of photography to resist the global techno-capitalist hegemony that underpins the exponential collapse of biodiversity and the decline of spirit and mutual understanding in the contemporary world. ‘1  Campbell calls for a green revolution that disrupts the destructive cycle threatening our ecosystems, by conveying the interdependent relationship of complex biological, spiritual and symbolic structures 

On the Last Afternoon: Disrupted Ecologies and the Work of Joyce Campbell, is an extensive survey that brings together 130 new and existing works. Clarifying the planted wisdom and inherit histories that inform and are revealed by her practice, John C. Welchman’s curatorial dialogue with the architecture of the Adam Art Gallery further extends the foundation for Campbell’s work. This exhibition projects the aims of the artist, functioning as both an objective and opinionated documentation and divination of the impact of natural and cultural systems. Connecting to the wider discourse of ecological issues, this exhibition reflects the educational turn present in the contemporary art world. Campbell’s work reminds us that we are ‘dependent on what is outside of ourselves, on others, on institutions, and on sustained and sustaining environments.’ 2  

1. “Adam Art Gallery: Current Exhibition,’’ Victoria University, last accessed 01/08/2019, http://www.adamartgallery.org.nz/current-exhibition/ 

1. Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (New York: Verso 2010), 23. 

Contextual Reflection

Skin; the largest organ of the body, functions as a substance, a signifier and a protective container. The role that skin plays, however, is not just purely instrumental: It is a site of contact and mediation with the world, a performative surface by which our identity is both formed and designated, serving as a symbolic interface of materialisation and meaning. ‘’Skin is a liminal structure, it is in-between, it is the template on which our experience, inner and outer, is inscribed, and our experience and inheritance, is there to be read by others.” 1, In a sense, skin is a form of archive that holds traces of our personal histories. Preservation and documentation of this record is vital and forms the contextual focus of my practice.

In my inquiry into the notion of skin as a site of inscription, I aim to draw attention to the often-overlooked scars and marks that bear testament to our experiences, whether accidental or self-made. The act of uncovering these hidden tethers is an attempt to address the uneasiness connected to concealment and exposure, which is necessary in order to understand the complexities of embodiment and inherence of inhabiting a skin. This attempt to capture this elusive nature of skin is an investigation to reveal evidence and questions embedded beneath the surface about identity, memory and the inextricable connection of the body and the embodied self.

My role in my practice is to be an archivist and creator. Material explorations in photographic medium’s qualities have been the primary vessel of preservation and creation. Photographs are reminiscent of time capsules and can only represent the past and therefore, like scars, signal an absence due to its temporal physical constraints when depicting the present. Both scars and photographs exist in a liminal space as a trace, ethereal and fleeting in their link to an event. ”The medium of photography speaks to the possibility of escaping the skin, for the negative is a vulnerable surface, is nothing but surface disconnected from its referent thus pure signifier and, most significantly for me, is a membrane, much as the skin is, upon which other things come to be inscribed.” 2 The properties of the medium not only dictate the nature of the representation in this space that is indexical, it in turn, determines the nature of the memories, imaginings and associations that overlay each other. Informed by the underlying substrate in which other processes are enacted.

Consisting of a series of portraits, the body of work is a collection of documented marks on individuals’ histories. Close-cropped, these scars left on the bodies pictured have come to stand in for memory, allowing the subject to be anonymous and only identifiable by the presented fragment. Treatment of these individuals as magnified skin-scapes, rather than traditional portraits depicting a face for reference, release an experience between bodies. ‘’Focusing on the nuances of skin, skin portraits allow our attention to move from the subjects’ identity to the experience of embodiment of many bodies, including the viewers. ‘’3 This push and pull between the viewer and their physical relationship with the portraits reveals a thin-skinned disposition, forcing a personal encounter that feels invasive in a public setting; a crossing of boundaries takes place. The motivations and concerns of my work are to challenge the value skin beyond a mere surface or receptacle and consider the embodied knowledge present.

Notes:

1. Michael J. Amy, Hans Gercke, and Heinz Norbert Jocks, Skin (Berlin: Heildberg, 2002), 22

2. Watson K. Amy, Complexion: Skin, Surface and Depth in Contemporary Art Practice (Johannesburg: The Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2010), 84.

3. Kellett, Heidi. “Skin Portraiture: Relational Embodiment and Contemporary Art. (Probing the Skin: Cultural Representations of Our Contact Zone, 2015) 244.

Bibliography:

Brown H. Elspeth and Phu, Thy. Feeling Photography. (London: Duke University Press, 2014)

Burbridge, Ben and Pollen, Annabella, Photography Reframed: New Visions in Contempoary Photographic Culture. (London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2018)

Gibbons, Joan. Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remeberance. London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2009)
Kellett, Heidi. Skin Portraiture: Relational Embodiment and Contempoary Art. (Probing the Skin: Cultural Representations of Our Contact Zone, 2015)

Michael J. Amy, Hans Gercke, and Heinz Norbert Jocks, Skin (Berlin: Heildberg, 2002)
Watson K. Amy, Complexion: Skin, Surface and Depth in Contempoary Art Practice (Johannesburg: The Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2010)

May 3, 2019Context, Contextual, Reflection, Research, skin, StatementLeave a commentEdit