Kristina Campbell Articles

I’ll be off to Toronto in two weeks for the Moving Images Film Festival. Searching For Emily will be screening at the Toronto Underground Cinema, 186 Spadina (at the corner of Spadina and Queen Street West) on October 16th, 5:30 to be followed with a Q&A with me. I’m looking forward to seeing Searching For Emily on the big screen and having the opportunity to meet other filmmakers and artists at the festival.

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!

Videolab @ Media-net and show @ Open-Space

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.

July 7^th, 2011

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.

My recently completed documentary about Canadian artists Emily Carr and Manon Elder is spreading its’ wings as it travels out into the world. Searching For Emily has won its first award on the film festival circuit; an Honourable Mention at the LA Movie Awards! This was wonderful news to get while I was away travelling in Denmark. 

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!

I was the keynote speaker for careers day at Glenlyon Norfolk School today. Given my long and winding path to become an artist, I found it incredibly poetic and ironic that I should be the keynote speaker for the day. I opened with Julia Cameron’s quote, “If you want to be a great artist, you have to be willing to be a bad artist first.”

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 Other Emily opened today at the Royal BC Museum. Manon Elder and Kathryn Bridge both spoke beautifully and over 200 people were there for the opening of the exhibition. Manon’s portraits look like museum pieces, so beautifully framed and displayed amongst all of the photographs and writings from Emily Carr’s early life. Documenting the genesis of this exhibition has been such an honour. Watching Manon (with her paintings) and Kathryn (as the curator) working off each other, feeding each other, coming from two completely separate disciplines but sharing one another’s passion for their task of redefining the public image of Emily Carr has been fascinating and inspiring.

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.

I tried to deliver the master to Vancouver yesterday, but after sitting in a ferry lineup for over an hour, BC Ferries finally cancelled the days’ sailings due to high winds. I am really coming down to the final wire trying to get these manufactured in time for the opening. Western Imperial Magnetics has promised to do their best for me, so fingers crossed.

The show is over, delivering those that sold, taking the rest back to the studio. In a way it’s difficult to have them stacked back against the walls in my studio, they looked so beautiful properly hung, my work studio just can’t do them justice.

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.

The opening reception for the Sappho Series was a huge success, over a hundred people in attendance and lots of new and unfamiliar faces as well. Dave Lenam had interviewed me for the Daily Show on Shaw, it was pretty cool to see my paintings getting that kind of promotion, and it certainly contributed to the strong turnout that night. Casey Ryder and Dave Lang brought along a few friends and kept us moving to their gypsy jazz tunes. It was a great night!

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.”

I have been working on a feature length documentary, Searching For Emily. In the fall of 2009, Manon Elder, Canadian portrait artist, approached me with her current project wanting to know if I would be interested in documenting the process of her creating a body of work for an exhibition for the Royal British Columbia Museum. What started as a small project has grown in scope and scale over the year and a half that we have worked together. I am in the final editing stage, and the documentary will be released in March 2011. Excerpts from the documentary will form part of the exhibition which will run from March to October 2011 at the Royal British Columbia Museum.
Manon’s project arose from her desire to redefine the image of Emily Carr. In 2001 she had read Emily Carr’s books and found her voice fresh, modern and inspiring. Puzzled by the discrepancy between the image of Emily Carr that she had in her mind and the image that grew from reading her writing, Manon began to search the BC Archives for photos of the young Emily Carr. Seeing an alternate set of images of Emily Carr inspired Manon to begin the series of portraits, “The Other Emily”. Working from archival photographs, and inspired and influenced by Emily Carr, as well as members of the Group of Seven and the Impressionists, Manon has created a series of portraits which truly redefine the image of a Canadian icon.
Searching For Emily, documents the search for inspiration which turned into a year long odyssey. Following in the footsteps of Emily, searching for traces of her influence, her spirit, and her courage ultimately led us to Haida Gwaii, where we journeyed to the ancient Haida village sites in Gwaii Haanas which Emily painted 100 years ago. The collaboration between Kathryn Bridge, curator of the Royal BC Museum and Emily Carr expert, and Manon Elder, grew from shared professional interest to a friendship of discovery. Examining the Emily Carr materials with a fresh set of eyes has lead to some interesting discoveries, a bit of history being corrected and ultimately to redefining the image of Canadian icon Emily Carr.