Artist-in-Residence

Artist: Susan Campbell | Photo: Zoned Out (installation view) provided by artist, Susan Campbell

SUSAN CAMPBELL – June, 2021

RESIDENCY PROJECT

Palimpsest of Faded Texts – A palimpsest is a textual surface (parchment or manuscript) where the writing has been scraped off so that the surface can be reused or corrected. Over time however, faint traces of the original document reappear and can be deciphered through multiple layers. In this sense, palimpsest describes these additive and subtractive processes, and the term is often applied to mapping practices where layers of meaning are brought together to represent the social, cultural, and economic activities of a particular place.

How we talk to one another through messages, notes, posters, and official signs can be mapped from our environment. Various kinds of signs and symbols can be found throughout the community: sprayed onto sidewalks, painted onto walls, attached to window panes, stapled onto hydro poles; and together they form an ever evolving cultural palimpsest of what we value and preserve.

During her residency, Susan will engage the community in map-making practices.

Community members will be encouraged to collect as many instances of handwritten and fabricated symbols or letterforms as they can find throughout Port Hope. They may prefer to draw, trace, or photograph the found forms. What’s most valued is the idiosyncratic or personal nature of the letterforms rather than their age or authenticity. Letterforms might very well exhibit the ravages of time and weather such as peeling paint, or they may be quite recent letterforms, derived for example from the familiar “Lost Cat” poster. (E.g. notes and messages attached to Ed White’s Appliance Store on Mill Street South).

Once you have collected these found forms, they can be submitted to the dropbox at the Little Station, where the artist will prepare and print out the elements at poster-size.

The community will be invited to a cut+paste workshop outside the Little Station where they’ll use wheat paste to create typographic compositions or collages. 

ARTIST BIO

Susan Campbell is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of lens-based media, sculpture installation and intervention. She obtained an MFA in Art, Media and Design from OCADU after extensive studies in design and digital media in Ireland.

Campbell investigates signs and patterns of urban intensification as played out on development sites, parking lots and public sidewalks. Her work frequently explores physical mapping practices as a means to interpret and reflect on the design dynamics found within the urban landscape, confronting issues brought about by the intensification of urban development. Her work prompts people to think about and question the economic frameworks that underpin their built environment, particularly how such frameworks engender a visual culture that is predominantly techno-graphic in nature. In addition to exhibiting across Canada and internationally, Campbell has received numerous grants from Canada Council of the Arts and Ontario Arts Council.

Campbell currently teaches art and design at OCAD University and Durham College in Ontario, Canada.