Workshops

Post Christmas Sale and Sculpture Course by Fiona

My next Online Sculpture Course runs 10 Jan-13 Feb 2022. Aimed at adults with mixed abilities, the 5 week course is designed to inspire you to get creative with nature-inspired sculptural work using found and recycled materials, including wire. Visit this link to find out more and see my showreel.

COST: £80
TO ENROL email: fionacampbell-art@sky.com

You’ll receive further info + a free tools list

Book now as places are limited!

Testimonials:

‘Brilliantly delivered by Fiona, through her weekly blogs/zoom and Whatsapp presentations…’ Gina Glover

Clearly structured and catered for all abilities… my creativity is much more free-flowing and is absolutely blossoming as a result’ Sarah Herfet

‘Friendly, guiding and inspiring... This has had a significant impact on my practice as an artist.. a joy’. Nicky Oram

Do share this with anyone you think would be interested.


Iris Roots, charcoal on Somerset Paper, 76 x 57cm

I want to highlight some of my favourite pieces in my online store and let you know about my post Christmas sale, which lasts until midnight this Friday 31 December. I’m offering 10% discount on all purchases via my shop, and I’ll also be donating 10% of product sales to Save Pangolins this month. So, with your purchases you’ll not only be getting a slice of me at a reduced price, but also helping to stop trafficking and slaughter of these precious creatures - the most trafficked on earth, tragically slipping away to extinction.

Use this DISCOUNT CODE at checkout to get your 10%: FIPROMO21. Please take your time to explore everything the shop has to offer. Enjoy!








Winter News by Fiona

In the Studio

I’m currently exploring layers, patchwork, pattern and tie dye for a new sculptural installation of multiple suspended pieces based on pangolins and their tragic plight. Strange forms are progressing in the studio. I went to Chichester Cathedral for a site visit and to meet curator Jacquline Creswell recently, and now have a beautiful space allocated for my installation. Really excited about the venue and the work we are making for our RSS group sculpture exhibition next summer - ‘Together We Rise’.  Our RSS SW artist group has become quite a tight online community. We discuss practices, ideas, offer advice and support, share exhibition news and talk about our concerns in these strange Covid days..

Using recycled, donated and found materials, I’m making a series of bodily forms and hangings in various states: skeletal, bound, unravelled, sutured, ornamentalised…. I’ve been looking at a range of art from The Ghent Altarpiece and Michelangelo to Arshille Gorky and Annette Messager, aiming for a painting in space.

Pangolins are the most trafficked mammals on earth, now endangered, and nearing extinction; they need all the help they can get for survival. I will be donating 10% of all shop sales (physical products) in December towards Save Pangolins.  And an extra 10% on orders until tomorrow towards David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation’s The Big Give Christmas Challenge. Take a look now!

Ingram Prize 2021

Last month it was exciting to be part of the Ingram Prize exhibition in London. I felt honoured to be selected for the prestigious exhibition. It all hung together so beautifully.

Ingram Prize 2021. Photography by Paul Tucker. Courtesy of The Ingram Collection & Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop

Jo Baring, Director of The Ingram Collection said ‘The Ingram Prize is a barometer of artistic excellence in contemporary British art. 29 exceptional finalists whose bold and startling work encapsulates contemporary themes and issues..’

Glut is a labour of love, and takes a few hours to instal and de-instal. Made in 2018 from found and recycled materials, it’s a wailing in response to environmental issues: waste, consumerism, factory farming, plastic oceans, animal extinctions… And the death of our dog. The materials speak of past lives, loss, textiles, craft; the forms reflect a duality of horror and tenderness.

The Private View was packed and buzzing, it was great to meet the curators, host, artists and catch up with friends and family, who I stayed with during set up and take down. 

As part of the award we attended professional development talks - all helpful info.

You can listen to our artist audios here:

While in London I visited the Tate Modern with my cousin. Loved Anicka Yi’s kinetic floating aerobes and the Phyllida Barlow Artist Rooms. Also saw the diverse RA Summer exhibition - all such a treat. 

For me, it’s increasingly vital to repurpose, recycle, utilise to-hand materials and found objects; I like to connect with meaningful ancient modes of making like stitching, weaving and wrapping - the ‘visceral nature of art-making’ (Yinka Shonibare).

Exhibition in Taiwan

Pyre’ is showing at the 2021/22 Biennal International: Transfiguration, NTCRI, Nantou, Taiwan. It runs until 10th April 2022. There will be a film of the exhibition, which I’ll share asap. I’d love to visit, but it’s unlikely!

Online Sculpture Course

I’m running my 3rd online Sculpture Course: 10/1/22 - 13/2/22.  If interested please email me: fionacampbell-art@sky.com or enrol via my shop, where you can find further details.


Online shop

I’ve finally created an e-commerce facility on my website shop, with updated products. There is currently a Bulrush sale - prices of these will go up in January, so order soon!  They are presents that last, made mainly of recycled materials, helping towards a circular economy to avoid waste. Click here to see what else is on offer.


Thanks to Somerset’s VESP business initiative, I was given helpful advice by Melanie Sensicle and Graham Soult. 


Free Workshop

I have a FREE Workshop coming up at The Art Bank, Shepton Mallet on 10th December, 1-3pm. We’ll be making eco Christmas decorations using recycled and found materials including copper wire. To book email me: fionacampbell-art@sky.com (limited spaces so book soon)


One of my website updates includes this Chameleon film. Take a tour of my website to see more.

For regular updates visit my instagram page and consider following.

Wishing you a Happy Christmas!

Workshops, Exhibitions, Residencies by Fiona

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Inch by IN:CH

We had a magical day in the woods at Found Outdoors for our pop-up earlier this month. The light was sublime. ‘The work was held by the environment so well it could have been made for it!’ (Philippa Edwards). 

Our finale at the Gauge Museum (West Somerset Railway, Bishops Lydeard TA4 3RU); 25 September - 3 October, 11am-5pm daily (closed Mondays) is part of Somerset Open Studios.

The event is part of a 6 month travelling exhibition of art in cases. We’re treating this as a residency, so each of us will be working on something in situ.

We have some exciting events for you to take part in! Some are drop-in, others are part of The Big Draw and need to be booked in advance. We’re keen to engage Somerset-based residents.

The first workshop this Sunday will be led by me and Shirley Sharp:

Sculpture and Shadow Drawing Workshop: Sun 26 Sept, 2-4pm. Make sculptures and shadow drawings using wire, clay, newspaper and recycled materials. We will first create heads and other sculptural forms. The artists will then guide you to use these as inspiration to draw sculpted shadows, enhanced by dramatic lighting, using inks and graphite, limited places. For adults and children (accompanied by adult/s). Just £5 for materials. Book via Eventbrite:

Next week:

Family Drawing Workshop: Sat 2 Oct, 2-4pm. Exploring the Journey of Line: where it might go and how it might get there. With Helen Anson & Anna Kot….. Eventbrite,

Family Sculpture Workshop: Combine sculpture and drawing processes using mainly recycled materials; Supported by Somerset Art Works and linked to The Big Draw; Sun 3 Oct, 2 - 4pm Eventbrite

Please share this information with anyone you think might be interested. Our funds depend on participants!

For more events visit www.inchbyinch.uk

Wells Art Contemporary, Wells Cathedral

There’s still time to visit Wells Art Contemporary, where my installation Snakes and Ladders (I) is exhibited. I’m so grateful to visitors, wonderful feedback and photographs of my work. Below are some beautiful shots taken in the cathedral by Barry Cawston, Dominic Weston, Polly Hall, and Jack Robson

Snakes and Ladders (I), Wells Cathedral. Photo by Barry Cawston

Snakes and Ladders (I), Wells Cathedral. Photo by Barry Cawston

Photo by Polly Hall

Photo by Polly Hall

Photo by Dominic Weston

Photo by Dominic Weston

Photo by Jack Robson

Photo by Jack Robson

The extraordinary effort and process involved in transporting, fixing together, erecting and suspending the piece will happen in reverse next week! There have been some excellent reviews of the exhibition and installations. It ends on Sunday 26 September, so if you haven’t yet, I’d recommend a visit! :-)

Snakes and Ladders (I) was originally created as part of a series of dysfunctional ladders and hangings for B-Wing, Shepton Mallet Prison. The piece was inspired by Piranesi’s ‘The Bridge’, referencing the human cycle of striving, greed and suffering. The winglike skeletal structure is a precarious stairway, reminiscent of flight and extinct animals hung in museums. My use of recycled and discarded materials relates to waste, our relationship with matter and nature.

Loft Residency

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I’m really enjoying my ongoing Loft Residency above Heritage Courtyard Gallery and Studios. Huge thanks to Heritage Courtyard Gallery for all their support, for facilitating my residency, and to all our lovely visitors; it’s been wonderful to meet and chat with friends and new acquaintances. Open 18 Sept-2 Oct, 11-4 (closed Sun/Mon).

Some of my pieces are in progress. I’ll be working on them over the next week or so. The residency is giving me the opportunity to experiment with the space and new ideas using mainly recycled and found materials, responding to ongoing global events and nature’s complex interconnections.

As part of this event I'll be running a sculpture workshop on Saturday 2 October, 2-4pm in the gallery:

‘Inspired by the incredible variety of creatures and plant forms in our natural world, come and explore different processes to create a small sculpture, using recycled and found materials including copper wire. Materials will be provided, but do bring your own collection of buttons, bottle tops and beads to add to your sculpture! £15pp. Book via email: fionacampbell-art@sky.com’.

I’ll be there when the gallery’s open apart from Saturday 25/9, when I’ll be at my Inch by IN:CH venue (16).

Hope to see you at one or more of these events!

For more images visit my Instagram page

Looking back and forward by Fiona

Looking back

For me, this past year has been exceptional - hugely important to my creative development, and personally.   High and low life-changing events have caused great shifts in my practice.

Focusing on the highs, I was delighted to have gained a distinction in my Masters in Fine Art, and thrilled to have recently been selected for a Royal Society of Sculptors Gilbert Bayes Award.  I am greatly looking forward to the mentoring sessions and other development opportunities, and very happy to be a part of the RSS.

In the last few weeks I have been re-calibrating.  This has included sorting my studio space, planning new projects, running workshops, invigilating at Hauser & Wirth, starting a commission, visiting exhibitions in London, and making a giant octopus sculpture to lead the Shepton lantern parade (22 Dec) in collaboration with the Rubbish Art Project and local community, using colourful recycled plastic and wire.

Looking forward

I have some exciting exhibitions and projects lined up for next year:

Coming soon: my large piece ‘Glut’ will be shown at ‘Incendiary’, Landsdown Gallery/SVA, Stroud, 4-10 February 2019

I’ll also be working towards creating a site-specific body of work for a Residency and Solo Exhibition in the Cells, Town Hall Arts, Trowbridge, April – May 2019.  The cells will provide an interesting test space in which to explore new ideas and processes.   Alongside this, I’ll be running workshops. The work will potentially lead to another project later in the year in Shepton Mallet prison – more info on this and other exhibitions later.

My website is currently having a major facelift - the new face should be ready in January.   Meanwhile, if you’d like to keep in touch, do join me on Instagram, Twitter and/or Facebook (links below):

Instagram fionacampbellartist

Twitter @fionasculpture

Facebook Fiona Campbell Art

All the best for a happy, peaceful, fulfilling Christmas and New Year!

 

 

Tentacular by Fiona

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At the start of this month, I went to a Somerset Art Weeks Symposium in Taunton ‘Prospecting: new directions and territories for artists’ practice’.  It was an invigorating day, albeit condensed, making connections and thinking laterally.  I particularly enjoyed catching up with SAW artists and meeting new practitioners. One of our tasks to bring to the event was a ‘This is Me’ profile for a group wall display.  Mine (below) reflects on the tentacular nature of my practice:

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The talks highlighted inspiring examples of socially engaged practice and collaboration.  In workshops with Kerry Harker and Lydia Catterall we discussed the imperative for resilience, forging artist-led initiatives, and finding interesting spaces to show our work.  With this in mind, I’ve been planning a few interesting ventures for next year.  Two happen to involve prison cells.

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I’m excited to be mulling over ideas for a residency culminating in a solo exhibition in the basement cells at Town Hall Arts, Trowbridge, in the Spring.  Alongside the show, I'll be delivering some related workshops with the young and elderly.  I am also in early stages of organising a joint art project and exhibition with Luminara Star and the Rubbish Art Project in Shepton Prison (the oldest UK working prison - now vacant until it gets developed into residential homes).  The cells are still in tact.  Both sites are unique, intriguing spaces for site-specific work, full of dark, sad histories, appropriate for creative responses to current society and environmental issues.  On a sunny day, light through the windows, steel bars and grids casts dramatic linear shadows. The prison, now silent, has great acoustics - one can only imagine the sounds of its past. We hope to include other artists, possibly sound, film, performance and installation and will engage the community in the making process.

A recent tweet about a bull elephant being shot because it broke out of its fenced enclosure in South Africa made me fume.  Almost as bad as poaching and trophy hunting.  It turns out they did not maintain the fences adequately, and all he was doing was naturally pushing boundaries, exploring, roaming beyond barriers – human imposed after all.  Why shoot him? Because he wasn’t towing the line we impose for our own humancentric logic.

Inky the Octopus, a hero in 2016, broke out of his aquarium tank in New Zealand National Aquarium, slid/crawled across the floor and down a drainpipe to the ocean.  Amazing intelligence and agility, but as this article points out, for many reasons beyond our own intelligence. Octopuses are so very different to us – ‘aliens’ apparently.  What’s fascinating is that ‘octopus literature is full of such flights to freedom’. The escape and how he did it remains a mystery. I was in awe watching an octopus in David Attenborough’s Blue Planet (Green Seas episode) trick a shark and escape by very cunningly and swiftly covering itself with a coat of shells. Picasso and his contemporaries were intrigued by ‘The Octopus’, 1928, a film by Jean Painleve, which led to Picasso's octopus-like women.  Octopuses also remind me of the interconnectedness of life:

The tentacular are... fingery beings like humans... squid, jellyfish, neural extravaganzas, fibrous entities, flagellated beings... swelling roots... The tentacular are also nets and networks... Tentacularity is about life lived along lines... a series of interlaced trails’ (Donna Haraway, 2016)

So, this creature – a symbol of our great and mysterious oceans- inspired my design for a giant octopus lantern to lead 2018 Shepton Lantern Parade (see top).  I am making the chicken-wire structure, then working on it with the community and the Rubbish art project in workshops at the Art Bank,Shepton Mallet, using recycled materials, especially plastic.  Workshop dates: Sat 24 Nov 11am-1pm, Mon 26 11-1, Mon 3 Dec 7-9pm, Thur 6 Dec 4-6pm + more... To take part in a workshop email lucy@therubbishartproject.co.uk   The Octopus will be lit by led lights and paraded on 22 December with the Shepton Lantern Parade. Please come along!

Creature and environmental concerns continue to engage me, as does the blurring of boundaries.  My thoughts are currently meandering around concepts of confinement, caged animals/humans, factory farming, obstruction, barriers, walls within walls.. and I'm sure there will be an element of the tentacular.

Other news:

I received the official results of my Masters in Fine Art this week and delighted to have passed with distinction!

In between tidying up my studio so it's fit for purpose, I've started working on a 1 metre Great Crested Newt as a commission for Carymoor Environmental Centre in memory of Hamish Craig, whose amazing contribution to Carymoor was instigated by great crested newts found there.

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Last week I ran my first workshop as part of the Holburne Museum education team.  It was an A'Level life-drawing session linked to 'Rodin: rethinking the fragment'. It encouraged me to do some of my own life-drawing beforehand and prep on Rodin's link with the Pantheon sculptures, which all helped.

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The class did some fabulous drawings:

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Forthcoming exhibitions include: Residency and Solo Exhibiiton (title TBC), The Cells, Town Hall Arts, Trowbridge, April - May; Incendiary, Landsdown Gallery and SVA, Stroud, 4-10 February 2019; Marks Hall Sculpture, Essex, 20 July - 1 September 2019; Reformation, Bishops Palace, Wells, July - October 2019.  More info to follow.

If you'd like to receive updates please follow me here or on instagram, where I add regular updates: https://www.instagram.com/fionacampbellartist/   

My website is undergoing a complete rehaul and a much needed paring down.  Watch this space!