Fiona Campbell: residency/exhibition - a-n The Artists Information Company

Venue: Create@#8
Starts: Monday, February 20, 2023
Ends: Saturday, March 25, 2023
Address: 8 Town Street, Shepton Mallet BA4 5BG
Location: South West England
Organiser: Fiona Campbell

Fiona Campbell is currently showcasing new work in a solo exhibition – the culmination of a 3-week art residency in the large empty shop space Create@#8, 8 Town Street, Shepton Mallet BA4 5BG. The exhibition has been extended for another week, open Mon-Sat, 11am-4pm, until Saturday 25 March.

Fiona has been developing work related to our natural world and its entanglements. This is part of her Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice award, which is supporting Fiona’s development towards deeper sustainability in her practice, and also supported her recent research trip to Kenya, where she re-connected with her roots and the Kenyan contemporary art scene.

Transformed into a gallery, work comprises immersive sculptural installations, drawings, collages, sketchbooks and the in-between – a range of suspended, wall-mounted and free-standing works. An evocative soundscape enhances the experience, created in response to my work by Ushara Dilrukshan. It is a timely lead up to Earth Day in April.

Two of the pieces created this year will be exhibited in Wander_Land, at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens and Gallery.

‘My approach is a form of suturing, slow art, artivism. This relates to concerns about climate breakdown, human exploitation of nature and over-consumption, which has led to catastrophic mass animal/plant extinctions. Labour-intensive, the binding, weaving, hand-stitching and re-appropriation of materials considers value, care and repair, making do, our relationship with matter, nature, and ourselves.

I’ve been developing work related to our natural world. Above and Below is a response to the entanglements and cycles of life that make up earth’s strata. Flags of the Forest is inspired by woodlands. The flags celebrate bio-diversity, hopeful of nature being more cared for, and thriving. These involve a combination of sculptural lines and fields of colour in space – hand-stitched patchworks of semi-translucent textiles and plastic remnants. Some I’ve botanically dyed, eco-printed or embedded with found objects collected on walks. Woods and forests provide vital ecosystems – crucial to our survival,’ says Fiona.

Open 11-25 March, Mon-Sat, 11am-4pm, Create@#8, 8 Town Street, Shepton Mallet, Somerset BA4 5BG

Fiona Campbell

Fiona is a visual artist, educator and curator, passionate about art and nature. Brought up in Kenya, she is now based in Somerset, UK. Fiona creates mixed media artworks, often blurring boundaries between sculpture, drawing and installation, sometimes as large scale assemblages. Approached as drawings in space, line extends into 3d form. Fiona also works in film, and dips into performance. She works within the community, collaborating and curating art projects involving social engagement - often in unexpected places for art. At the root of her practice is the notion of interconnectedness throughout nature, line as energy, life’s cyclical persistence and transformation. Increasingly, environmental concerns about human exploitation of nature and over-consumption inform the content, taking her work into the realm of artivism. Fiona is interested in tentacularity - linear life forms repeated micro to macro. She sees these rhizomic connections as metaphors for life, vitalism and regeneration. 'Tentacularity is about life lived along lines ... a series of interlaced trails’ (Donna Haraway). Materiality and process are central: Fiona's work is labour-intensive and her use of found objects, discarded and recycled materials relates to waste, our relationship with matter, nature, and ourselves. Collecting materials is an intrinsic part of the process. Throughout, there is an underlying theme of sustainability. Fiona gained an MFA from Bath Spa University in 2018 and a BA from Byam Shaw School of Art, London in 1987. Alongside her own practice, she teaches art and brought up her son. In 2019, she won a Royal Society of Sculptors Gilbert Bayes Award culminating in RSS GBA Winners exhibition, London & becoming a Member of RSS. She was selected for Ingruttati Palermo workshop and exhibition, part of Manifesta12, Italy, where she made a performative piece Gift of Water. Residency solos include Offenders, Cells, Town Hall Arts, Trowbridge, '19; Found, Now Missing, Voyages at Contains Art, Watchet '14; and she was highly commended for her Green Capital Residency, Big Green Week, culminating in exhibitions at Create Centre and Arnolfini, Bristol, '12. Fiona was awarded Arts Council funding for her ambitious project ‘step in stone‘, involving site-specific artscapes in Mendip quarries with 14 international artists, in 2015. She curated and featured in the multidisciplinary event, which linked culture, environment and the community. She also co-curated and featured in ACE-funded B-Wing, Shepton Mallet Prison, a site-responsive project with 8 artists/writers and community events. She is currently working on an artist-led travelling project around South West UK - Inch by IN:CH, 2021. Commissions include a 4m hand woven canopy as a focal piece for Sarah Eberle’s Viking Cruises Mekong Garden, Chelsea Flower Show, 2016, which won gold and best artisan garden. Other awards include Round Lemon, ONE exhibition, first prize '21; Red Line Art Works Award, '20; Environmental Award, Devon Recycled Sculpture Trail ’14, Atkinson Gallery Summer Show, first prize ’11, and David Shepherd Foundation 3-d Wildlife Artist of the Year, ’09. A film about Fiona's work was commissioned by Art UK, in partnership with Culture Street & Royal Society of Sculptors in 2021. Fiona was Rep for Somerset Art Works, served on the Board of Trustees at Black Swan Arts, and is now on the BSA Programming Committee. www.fionacampbellart.co.uk