Tammi Campbell MONO/ CHROMATIC

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.