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
“Adam Art Gallery: Current Exhibition,’’ Victoria University, last accessed 01/08/2019, http://www.adamartgallery.org.nz/current-exhibition/
Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (New York: Verso 2010), 23.