Post written by Claire Paterson, winner of the Steven Campbell New York Scholarship

Monday November 7^th

Went into the ISCP this morning and got settled into my space, starting to create an environment for the photo sessions, which begin Wednesday.

In the afternoon I travelled out to MoMA PS1 in Queens. My flat mate Giles works there, and has spent the last couple of months setting up the Mark Leckey show that occupies most of the floors of the building. I was bowled over by the amount of hard work that has clearly gone into assembling such a vast and complex show.

I’m interested in some of the ideas that Mark Leckey explores. Leckey has an obsession with primeval myth and the initiation of transformations, and the part of the exhibition that I was drawn to most was a dark gallery filled with black-light images and eerily illuminated objects. Leckey wanted to imbue these stationary objects with ‘animist energy’ and create a ‘composit of random meaning’ like a surrealist exquisite corpse – something I’ve been exploring recently in my own work.

At dusk, I was fortunate enough to stumble across the ‘Skyspace’ on the 3rd floor: a site-specific installation by James Turrell in which he’s removed a slice of the gallery roof, leaving the space open to the elements. I was able to sit and watch the sky change colour above, with its edges rimmed by ethereal artificial light from inside the gallery.

Tuesday November 8^th

Today I went searching around thrift stores in Brooklyn, looking for objects and props to use in my collaborative sessions with models.

Later on, I joined other students at the ISCP to watch the US election.

Wednesday November 9th

This morning I met up with New York figure model Celeste – a very talented Shakespearean actress, who also does aerial performances and puppet shows, amongst other things. The photo session and collaboration was great fun, with a lot of improvisation and an inspiring back-and-forth exchange of ideas (images to come soon!)

Thursday November 10^th

This morning I went out to The Big Reuse in Brooklyn to seek out more objects and props for possible use in my next collaborative sessions. One of the main highlights of my trip was petting The Big Reuse resident cat, who lives in the warehouse, sleeps on top of stacks of books, and enjoys cuddles from the staff!

In the evening, Executive Director at ISCP – Susan Hapgood – was good enough to host a gathering for ISCP residents at her home, before taking us around various openings that were happening in Chelsea, including a Paul McCarthy show that I’m planning to return to during the day at some point for a proper look around.

Friday November 11^th

This morning I met with figure model Z, having tea at Lula Bean cafe in East Williamsburg and discussing our collaboration, before heading to the studio for our photo session. Z brought along a mask and costume elements he wanted to use in his myth-making session – and because he’s a figure-skater, he was interested in creating particularly graceful poses.

In the evening, I went to the Australian embassy in Manhattan, where John Aslanidis – an ISCP artist from Sydney – was having an exhibition. It was interesting seeing many of John’s paintings gathered together in the one space. When viewed from a distance, the colours of the Sonic series really seem to thrum, the painted circles showing the ripple effect of sound-waves, so that his work seems to exist ‘at the threshold between music and painting’ (www.johnaslanidis.com). Discussions with John last week have led me to want to explore the influence of music on the myth-making process – and during my session with model K on Wednesday, I was able to use some music files John sent to help influence and determine poses.

Saturday November 12^th

G and I visited Mr Picker today, one of the artists who’s contributed work to the collaborative myth-making process.

Loved seeing Mr Picker’s art collection, which included an original Joseph Beuy’s print and a Hans Bellmer piece. I also enjoyed getting the tour of his inspiring Manhattan apartment, which is packed with his own paintings, sculptures and found objects.

In the afternoon, Mr Picker took us around some of his favourite sections of the Met, which is right by his apartment. Was enjoyable to see the links between certain Met pieces, and Mr P’s eclectic interests and the themes that appear in his own work.

Sunday November 13^th

Quiet day in the studio today, sorting through photos from my modelling sessions with C and Z. Looking forward to next week – already got lots planned!

Post written by Claire Paterson, winner of the Steven Campbell New York Scholarship

‘I think I became less interested in art, conceptual versus figurative, that kind of thing, and I became more interested in thinking about why things are the way they are’ – Steven Campbell.

Steven Campbell’s work displays a persistent fascination with illusion and the levels of reality that exist within a painting. By their nature, figurative paintings are flat and static, showing fixed and illusory worlds, the subjects trapped in time, caught in the confines of the canvas. As the writer Duncan MacMillan observes, while Campbell’s characters ‘innocently explore the apparent freedom of the world they inhabit, they run up against its limits, and, unconsciously, burlesque the limitations of the painters art and so of life itself.’

In the above painting, The Man who climbs Maps, we see the character of the Lost Hiker. Like so many of Campbell’s characters, the Hiker has strayed from his path, and in desperation, attempts to climb his map as if it were a cliff face.

Here, Campbell invites the viewer to consider the nature of painted space. In the world of painted narrative, everything is two-dimensional and on the same plane of existence: the flat illustrations on the map essentially no different from the surrounding landscape and the Hiker himself. Confused, the character mistakes the map for the territory and embarks on his absurd expedition.

Another interesting detail in this painting is the signpost on the bottom left. Such signposts appear often in Campbell’s work, indicating that the characters are suspended between different places, in a sort of limbo or no-man’s land. They never reach their goal or destination, and are trapped in an illusory world that frustrates them at every turn.

In Young Camper Discovering a Grotto in the ground, Campbell further explores the illusion of painted space. It has seven figures in different scales, and in this crowded painting, we’re not entirely sure who the camper is, and it may in fact be all of them.

The perspective here seems intentionally confusing: we don’t know whether characters are in the background or foreground, and are finally led to conclude that each figure inhabits his own ‘grotto’ of space in the picture-plane. These grottos overlap in a sort of mosaic, confusing the viewer, and apparently confusing the characters themselves. Campbell has taken images that may have made pictorial sense; dismantled, restructured and overlapped them, to demonstrate that representational painters deal only in illusion.

Campbell made this a major theme of his work in an exhibition he had at the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow (now the Centre for Contemporary Art) in 1990. The show questioned received notions about reality, often in a humorous way. In many of the paintings, certain figures or objects were missing, showing only white canvas in the place that they had once been or were intended to be.

The above painting Not you as well, Snowy, shows a young man returning home to see that his cat has also undergone this horrible metamorphosis, snatched from reality to leave only a blank silhouette in its place. Something which, to us, is only a bit of blank canvas in the middle of the picture plane, becomes the shape of this poor character’s missing cat – snatched away into the ether, leaving only his shadow and his paws. In this disturbing yet humorous way, Campbell questions the reality of our own world.

Sources used in this blog post: The Paintings of Steven Campbell, by Duncan MacMillan (p.27, 36, 37 & 65). If you’re wanting to find out more about the work of Steven Campbell, I’d highly recommend getting this Duncan MacMillan book, which looks at Campbell’s work in a great deal of depth.

For other posts about Steven Campbell, please visit Claire Paterson’s WordPress page:

https://clairepatersonartist.wordpress.com