Searching For Emily is screening in the Best of Can-Con Showcase. The films in this catagory are chosen because they speak to the following questions:

What is Canada’s message to the world? What makes Canadian films unique? How is the world seen through the eyes and ears of Canadian filmmakers? These films must symbolize what it is to be Canadian, and have Canadian content only.

The exhibition that Searchng For Emily is based on, The Other Emily, which has been at the Royal BCMuseum through 2011, will also be moving to a gallery in Vancouver for the summer of 2012. Very exciting news that the exhibition will be travelling further afield!

I am taking an interactive and installation video course
right now, through Media-Net, the video artist co-operative that I belong to.
Scott Amos, Justin Love, David Parfitt, Kirk Schwartz, Peter Sandmark and  Farheen Haq have been teaching us and
inspiring us for the past week. Now it’s time to build our own piece after a
crash course in electronics (using Arduionos), writing code, and using Modul8.

I know my theory about crash courses being the best way to
learn, but this is feeling a little more intense than usual. We basically have
a week to build our piece, the show opens August 11^th, at Open
Space, with our opening reception on Friday evening, August 12^th. I
am wanting to have two opposing video projections and the viewer, by their
position between the two screens, will choose which of the videos will be able
to be watched. There will be no middle ground, you have to choose. Each of the
videos is a montage of footage that I have shot, most of it in Denmark, and the
themes of the two videos will be the Sacred and the Profane.

The possibilities are unbelievable in terms of the
technology available to make interactive video. As much as I feel a little
overwhelmed by the technology, the fact is that everything continues to become
simpler, more accessible, and more affordable. I love the idea of the viewer
actually being able to have their decisions affect the outcome of the piece
that they are viewing. The implications are brilliant to me, confirmation that
the viewer’s choices have an impact. It is a perfect and poetic parallel in
terms of my beliefs about everything in life. Our choices are implicit
determinants. Every moment we make a choice, and it matters.

One of the challenges to me, in creating these two video
loops is to ensure that the two sides, the Sacred and the Profane, are equally
aesthetically beautiful and compelling to watch.  As much as it is my desire to force a choice
from the viewer, I am not wanting to weigh in on the argument of right or
wrong, good or bad. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Profane actually
ends up being the winner in terms of people’s choices, already the video seems
to me to be the more compelling and interesting to watch. Hmmmm, perhaps I need
to rework the Sacred. Stay tuned.

I spent the month of May touring around Denmark with friends
and family, and got to visit, once again, Lindholm’s Hoje, the site of a Viking
village and burial ground that is about a thousand years old. The stone ovals
of the graves, replicating the shape of the Viking ships, are strewn across a
grassy hillside above the city of Aalborg. Each time I am there I feel a
mystical connection to the place that defies explanation.

Since I returned I have been painting small Viking studies,
multi-media assemblages on wood cradle panels. Compared to the large scale of my
previous work, it feels liberating to work on these little panels, most of
which are only a foot square. I have been playing with composition, collage and
have switched to acrylic paint just to mix things up. The human figure, which
has been predominant in my work for so long, is completely absent. Instead I am
playing with the symbols of the Vikings; swords, shields, ships, runes, Norse mythology.
I am still carving into the surface of the wood, an echo of the Viking artists
carving their runes and images into stone.  My palette of dark, ancient colours is
loaded with metallics, gold and bronze.  I see these small pieces as studies for a new
series of larger works.

The submission process for film festivals across Canada and the US has begun and as dates are confirmed I will be posting them here on the website.  I will be screening Searching For Emily at Cinecenta  (the theatre at the University of Victoria) in late August as well, so there will be an opportunity to see Saerching For Emily on home turf.

Manon Elder and I will be presenting together at a few events here in Victoria this summer as well, one of the highlights will be the Moss Street Paint-in on July 16^th. Walking Moss Street in the sunshine, and chatting with artists working along the street, what better way to spend a summer afternoon? Come and join us!

It was a fascinating exercise to have to think about my career, and the many and seemingly pointless detours, which with hindsight, were pivotal to getting me to where I am today. And to really have to get clear and articulate about what I believe about the creative process and collective creativity: that all creative expression is the foundation upon which all innovation and growth in our collective wisdom and capacity for creativity builds upon. Every idea stems from the ideas that were articulated before it, and in order for us all to continue to grow and develop we need passionate creative thinkers who are willing to express their ideas, and to actually get things done, the ability to finish is vital. It is only by giving full expression to our creativity that we can put it out into the world to feed an ever expanding stream of creative consciousness. I closed the talk with Goethe, my favorite quote, which hangs in my studio, “Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

The DVD’s were delivered to the gift shop first thing this morning. It’s time for my part in the exhibition to start to make its way out into the world. Early feedback on the documentary has been gratifyingly positive, but now it is time for it to find a wider audience. The film festival submissions process begins, and I will need to organize a few screenings here in Victoria for it as well.

So now the big push is on the get the video “Searching For Emily” finished. The exhibition opens at the Royal BC Museum in exactly one month on March 2nd, 2011, the anniversary of the death of Emily Carr. I’ll be delivering the master of the documentary to Vancouver in the next week to have the DVD’s manufactured. The gift shop at the museum will be selling the DVD’s of the full documentary. The exhibition contains a 10 x 3 foot projection of excerpts from the documentary. It’s been interesting designing the loop for the exhibition given the unusual size of the projection. Sometimes there is just one image across the entire screen, sometimes it is split in two, and sometimes split into three separate images. The loop needs to be a lot less linear in nature as well, because people need to be able to join in at any time, and leave at anytime, and still get a sense of it.

Exhibit – V covered the show and Philip Willey wrote this review of my exhibition:

“Next, Actually a couple of days earlier, I stopped by the Martin Batchelor Gallery. The first thing that struck me about Kristina Campbell’s paintings is the scale. These are ambitious, life-size figures painted on wood panels using deeply etched lines. The paint has been wiped and sanded to suggest antiquity. In the background are hand written fragments (of letters?) and Sappho’s love poems. They are quite beautiful…if it’s OK to use that word. They suggest there is still plenty of scope for figurative painting. Maybe not Michelangelo but Campbell can certainly draw. The paintings are skillfully fashioned and quite powerful but they left me curious about the artist’s intent. Are they meant to be erotic or monumental? Was I looking at a paean to love or to a homage to Sappho? All of the above? Does it matter? No. The show runs to February 3rd.”