I always hear you before I see you #3, acrylic on wooden board, overall size 8″x 12″ (diptych), 2015.
Figure behind a lake
an exhibition by
Fernando do Campo
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The Monash Room
Australian Consulate-General
150 East 42nd Street, Floor 34
New York, NY, 10017
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RSVP essential to
by Thursday, 9 April
Dress: business casual
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Figure behind a lake marks Fernando’s first solo exhibition outside of Australia. This body of paintings has been produced at his studio at Parsons The New School for Design, where he is an MFA candidate. In 2014, Fernando became the inaugural General Sir John Monash Cultural Scholar.
An inquiry into the way that one perceives the spaces we move through and inhabit underpins Fernando’s whole practice. The construction of landscape, notions of place as respondent to the sites where the artist locates himself, and all that remains in-between (the conversations that occur – both public and personal, human and non-human) drives the need to note-take; to mark on things perceived, to archive, to walk, to write, to birdwatch, and to paint.
Once arriving to New York, Fernando halted on a previous process and rule based painting practice in order to reexamine the genesis of the work. An interest in perception, cognition, memory, and how these forms of perception and ‘sighting’ call upon a construction of landscape, came to the forefront. More importantly, the inquiry into his need to ‘fix’ an experience that is temporal and spatial surfaced.
Fernando is interested in the way that these relationships call upon a pictorial investigation. Figure behind a lake presents a new approach in his making outlining that process is inherent in the work as opposed to its genesis. Systems may appear in the work but are not predefined in order to make a picture; the singular, the diptych, the grouping, function individually and collectively. The figure (or figural), repeats itself elsewhere, and alludes to a form of representation that is abstract.
The way we enter a space, converse with a stranger, remember the sound of a bird, the colours from a walk, we carry these notes from one site to the next; landscape appears across multiple spaces, across multiple times. Fernando questions what one brings into a painting, sightings from another picture, another locale, and what does one then derive from a picture; maybe to remember only to be called upon; elsewhere, another day.
*Please email the artist directly for a copy of the catalogue of available works and sale enquiries. Fernando_docampo@hotmail.com
Fernando do Campo (b. Argentina, 1987) is an Australian artist and curator currently based in New York City. He is a graduate of the University of Tasmania and the Australian National University. From 2009-2013 he was Director of Sawtooth ARI. During that time he taught at the Tasmanian College of the Arts and curated projects for Contemporary Arts Tasmania, Junction Arts Festival, Carnegie Gallery. He has exhibited in group exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include; Onomatopoeia, Academy Gallery, University of Tasmania (2013), Two clouds passing behind stars, Mclemoi Gallery, Sydney (2013) and Come away closer, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin (2014). Fernando has received numerous awards, including individual grants from the Regional Arts Fund, Arts Tasmania and the Australia Council for the Arts. Residencies include the Cite International des Arts, Paris (2012) and Schloss Laudon, Austrian Ministry of Culture, Vienna (2013). In 2013, he was named Young Tasmanian of the Year (Arts). In 2014 Fernando became the inaugural General Sir John Monash Cultural Scholar, an award towards his MFA at Parsons The New School for Design, New York.
