I know a lady who swallowed a fly....
‘spectre she’s dead..’
‘... neurotic spectres and Victorian melodrama...’
Scour, an installation by Joyce Campbell will occupy the Studio Gallery and Foyer of the Fisher Gallery from Friday 24 March and continues until Sunday 23 April. In Scour, she investigates cleanliness and the spiritual and domestic obsession with purification.
Joyce Campbell graduated from Ilam School of Fine Arts, Christchurch with a BFA in 1991. In the last two years, she has exhibited work in Vogue/Vague at the C.S.A, Gaining Interest at Artspace, Art now at the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa amongst other exhibitions. Most recently she has made an installation in the National Bank on Vulcan Lane.
The exhibition is built out of cast iron forms and ghostly figures painted onto the studio gallery walls. The forms are cast as shells, presenting the drapery covered exterior in a clean, powder coated finish. These works are ghostly and mysterious and overwhelmingly clean.
This exhibition continues work Campbell has done investigating ‘implied presence’. The iron figures are feminine, empty vessels, that are haunted by a traditional male presence existing in such institutions and the figures on the walls. These no-bodies take as their source the neurotic spectres and sickly waifs of Victorian melodrama. They provide a series of clues for the viewer to participate in the narrative of the exhibition.
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→ Joyce Campbell: scour, 1995, publication