Tammi Campbell
MONO/ CHROMATIC
September 30 - December 16, 2016
College Art Galleries
Curator, Leah Taylor
Tammi Campbell’s series of Monochromes represent common packing materials utilized in the art studio, including cardboard, polyetheline wrap, bubble wrap, packing and masking tape. The sculptural paintings, comprised entirely of acrylic paint, manipulate medium and materiality through an exacting processes developed in Campbell’s studio. To this extent she has created seemingly impossible replicas of these materials.
Informed by the historical legacies of minimalism and the monochrome, her series offers a kind of re-evaluation on the conventions of viewing contemporary paintings. Monochromes are known to reduce painting to its purest form and colour, similarily, Campbell’s painting invite a close examination to the physical elements, such as the recreation of packing tape wrinkles, or scratches to the surface of the corrugated cardboard. Her sense of humour is evident in the details, but also in the ideological failings of an entire exhibition that appears installed to gallery specifications, yet is still packaged or wrapped.
About the Artist
Tammi Campbell is a Saskatoon based artist and alumni of the University of Saskatchewan. Over the past ten years, her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada, namely at the Mendel Art Gallery; the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto (2014); the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina (2013); Mercer Union, Toronto (2013); and the Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal (2013). In addition, a major solo exhibition of her work will be presented at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, in 2016. Campbell has also participated in the Canadian Biennale 2014 at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, as well as the 30thInternational Symposium of Contemporary Art of Baie-St-Paul, in 2012.
In recent years, Campbell’s work has been the subject of several feature articles in Canadian Art, Border Crossings, and C Magazine, and her work is part of several institutional collections, including BMO Financial Group, Toronto; Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina; Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon; Mouvement Desjardins, Québec; Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; RBC Financial Group, Toronto; TD Bank Group, Toronto. She lives and works in Saskatoon, Canada. Tammi Campbell is represented by Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal.
