Charles Campbell, Creative Contingencies

Creative Contingencies Charles Campbell will examine the notion of sustainable artistic production through the lens of his own practice. Looking specifically at his Transporter Project, Campbell explores the various contingencies as play in its making. Begun partly in response to a conference on human trafficking, the Transporter Project pulls together numerous threads from Campbell’s wider art practice, which looks at the interplay between heavily loaded political narratives and utopian ideals, painting, sculpture and performance, and personal and public spaces. Campbell will walk us through the development of this work, taking note of the role of institutional enablers and constraints, theoretical concerns, his biography, and the role that chance has played in the formation of his practice. Unpicking his own artistic process Campbell will posit a notion of sustainable artistic production, set at the interstices of multiple communities and concerns. This approach reveals inherent strengths in the Caribbean and its diaspora, proposing these to be privileged spaces for artistic production. Biography: Charles Campbell is a Jamaican born multidisciplinary artist, writer and curator working out of Kingston Jamaica and Victoria, British Columbia. He has exhibited throughout North America, the Caribbean and Europe, representing Jamaica and Canada in events such as Jamaica’s National Biennial; the Havana Biennial; the exhibition Infinite Islands: Contemporary Caribbean Art (Brooklyn Museum, 2007); and Contemporary Jamaican Art, circa 1962 | circa 2012, held at the Art Gallery of Mississauga in 2012. Campbell is also a regular contributor to the Caribbean arts journal, ARC Magazine. Campbell holds an MA in fine art from Goldsmiths College University of London and a BFA from Concordia University. His work uses images culled from the Caribbean’s history of slavery and emancipation to investigate the intersection between meaning and image and to open up the possibility of personal and social transformation.