Latest Projects

In the garden during Open Studios. Photo by Jason Bryant

I had a wonderful fortnight spending quality time with those who managed to get to my Open Studio, part of Somerset Open Studios 2020, in sunshine or rain. I’m really grateful to all my visitors. Along with making a few sales and new leads, I had some really great conversations. Below is a slideshow of the event and some of the feedback:

Fiona reminds us that the sharp divide between the living and the dead is not sharp at all (G.Dunlop)

Love how the garden informs the work and are one (R.Newnham)

A beautiful early autumn day in your magical garden; love seeing the ‘established’ works now blended into the landscape while the new pieces take shape on the lawn.  Your new processes - scorching, hanging, collecting - are fascinating.  Always something more to be found beyond the immediate (V.Keemar)

Thank you, Fiona, for bringing such beauty into our world. Goodness know we need it.  We are Nature and Nature is us.  Your work is inspirational (S.Herfet)

Absolutely divine - I adore your work and garden.  Such beauty and tenderness.  I love the organic nature of your art.  Soothes my sore soul. Thank you (T.Potts)

Really inspiring, fascinating to see the range of your ideas and commitments.  Truly value your references to world and global issues and your totally fascinating ways of interpreting and bringing it to our attention, as well as making beauty.  Thanks you for sharing (S.Hulejczuk)

Somerset Reacquainted continues at Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury until 21 November, Wed-Sat, 10-5 (booking required). Images and objects from my lockdown project Life in the Undergrowth feature in this exhibition, along with work by 62 other Somerset artists. I took part in a podcast with other artists on Friday 2 October. You can listen to it here. Great to see the exhibition featured on BBC Points West.

Earlier this month I installed a new sculpture Blackbird above the entrance to The Art Bank, Shepton Mallet. It features in a Bird Trail around the town, commissioned by Shepton Town Council. 7 artists have created British bird sculptures using natural and recycled materials for a 2 month free art trail for the public to enjoy.

Blackbird 95cm (L) x 68cm (H) x 34cm (D) aprx, recycled and found steel, tin, copper wire, plastic

On Friday 23 October, 6-8pm I’ll be taking part in Shepton on Show,  organised by The Art Bank in the centre of Shepton Mallet.   I’ll be doing a large-scale backlit performative drawing, linked to the worldwide drawing festival The Big Draw: Climate of Change, in One Craft Gallery, Shepton town centre. There will be surreal fantasy window performances around the town by local businesses and individuals. Come along and watch fantastical performances in windows - a celebration of the creativity in Shepton.  Free (safe) fun :-).

Prepping for Shepton on Show

I recently went to London for Frieze Art Week. 2 days visiting exhibitions and another day at Centre of Gravity, Bristol has sated my need to see some contemporary art in person. Images below: Frieze Sculpture, Regents Park: Arne Quinze, Lubaina Himid, Gazelli Art House, Sarah Lucas; Endless Column IV, Cornelia Parker, Frith Street Gallery: immaculately flattened silverware suspended just above ground - so beautiful; Giuseppe Penone, Among the Trees, Hayward Gallery: staggering pieces stood out; Off Grid, Olivia Bax, Standpoint Gallery; 6 Sculptures.., Anthony Caro, Annely Juda Gallery: I found connections between Bax’s work and Caro’s tabletop sculptures. Steel drawn lines against hollow biomorphic forms; line versus solid - perhaps because they’re qualities in my own work; Five Hides, curated by Thorp Stavri: incredible old Victorian swimming pool/boxing ring, now derelict - perfect for huge sculptural and textiles pieces; Centre of Gravity, old Gardiner Haskins building, Bristol: another monumental space ripe for contemporary art.

I had lovely interlude out sketching with my cousin in the sunshine in my local area of Somerset. I feel rejuvenated and ready to start experimenting in the studio again.

I’ll be running another online sculpture course in January. If you’d like details please get in touch.

A few other projects are in the pipeline - watch this space!

Take care :-)

Launching my Online Sculpture Course and other news

I’ve made a showreel to launch my forthcoming 5 week online sculpture course.   Starting on 3rd August, I’ll be teaching participants how to create a nature-inspired sculpture using found and recycled materials.  

The course includes:

Weekly challenges

Step-by-step guidance at each stage

Demos

Exclusive videos and downloadable content

Online seminars

You will learn:

A range of 2-d and 3-d skills - from drawing and design to 3d wirework

Exciting ideas and techniques 

To explore different media and processes

To source and use recycled and found materials

Benefits of the course:

Work at your own pace from home

Learn in your own time

Individual advice, tutorials and one-to-one critiques

Share ideas

Learn safely 

Opportunity to connect with other participants in a friendly virtual space

Increase your confidence in creativity

Create an item for your garden or interior

After completion, you can revisit techniques

COST:

£80 incl free tools list (by 31 July)

TO ENROL:

Email: fionacampbell-art@sky.com

Entangled I, 180 (w) x 110 (h) x 100 (d) cm, '20

My Life in the Undergrowth project continues (see previous blogs).  My ritual of gardening and documenting has become a rhythm. Exploring new boundaries, free from conceptual dividing lines, drifting between gardening and art, some days are productive others more a blur.  I’ve been getting absorbed in the present, nature, looking at tiny details. Trying to surrender to the moment and allow things to just happen. 

I’m making a film which records a few of the goings on in my garden. I’ve formed a stronger bond with all that comes and goes. Sometimes this has been emotional. Strange incidents happen, stories of life and death - some have been wonderful to witness, others very sad. 

A young rook and blackbird may have died from pesticide poisoning as there have been other similar incidents locally. I watched their behaviour and subsequent deaths. I sat with the rook, left it water and worms, tried to help it, but in vain.  Slug pellets, crop pesticides and other toxic chemicals we use to deal with ‘pests’ seep into the food chain. There are countless eco-friendly ways to protect our veggies - egg shells and copper wire for slugs, marigolds for aphids, or just ‘stay with the trouble’ (Donna Haraway). The rhubarb leaves I’ve been watching decay seemed the right thing to wrap up the bodies.

I’ve approached the project as an art residency. Encounters between myself, the garden as site, and nature, without an audience, in order to gain understandings and make new connections. I’ve been interested in transformation, the entanglement of roots, worms, shoots, earth.  Aristotle called worms; ‘the intestines of the earth’. Bird communication; the vitality of nonhumans; cultivating my aloneness.  Excavating the earth, I’ve been uncovering a glut of old rusty nails, bones and ceramics. It’s been a meditative process.  I am the instrument, allowing creative energy to emerge in its own time. As I make pieces I’m aware of Donna Haraway’s words: ‘life lived along lines… a series of interlaced trails… make kin in lines of inventive connection... stir up potent response.. and rebuild quiet places’.

You can follow my Life in the Undergrowth instagram page to see the journey @life_intheundergrowth

Other news

I’ve been doing digital training via Creativity Works, which has been a great help. It’s a long, windy road but I’m on it!

This week I drove to London to collect Glut from the Royal Society of Sculptors Gilbert Bayes Award Winners Exhibition - finally over after its extended lockdown.  At the same time, I delivered Accretion for the RSS Summer Show, opening 13 July. It was the first time I’d worn a facemask for covid protection - a requirement for de-installation. I made my own - hand dyed (with avocado pits), hand painted and hand sewn. I thought a pangolin made an appropriate statement about the origins of covid19 and the wildlife/meat trades in China, which I abhor.

Huge thanks to Arts Council England and National Lottery UK for the Emergency Response Fund enabling me the time to be creative and develop skills.  Thanks also to Richard Tomlinson (Ignite Somerset), Jack Offord, Jack Robson, Dave Cable, Caroline Bond, Duncan Simey, John Taylor, 35 mil, S-J White, Jason King, Juliet Lawn, Jennifer Moyes and Carrie Grainger for some of the footage for the film (see top).