Insight Into The Work Of Robin Campbell

Robin Campbell is an architect and artist. As architect he has been responsible for the Environment Centre and Tower of the Ecliptic. He established Air Architecture in 1998, winning the competition for the Lammas community hub in Glandwr, Pembrokeshire. Robin has prepared public art and landscape strategies for Baglan Energy Park and a town centre regeneration project in Maesteg. He has also founded Fertile Space which is a design collective with a view to creating products for the body or the home which reflect innovation and ecology.

A:You are and artist and also an award winning architect, how does this influence your work?
RC: Working in different scales has always proved challenging to my work as an architect and artist. Changing scale and material, texture and form tend to engage notions of intensity and space. Architectural form is no different from furniture form or jewellery form; its how the pieces fit together that challenges.

A:You have formed the Fertile Space design collective. What does this mean for your artwork and why did you found the collective?
RC:The Fertile Space collective relates to working collaboratively, understanding other technologies and procedures, and pulling energy from the interaction.

A: You work with found objects, how do you define a found object and why do you use them in your work?
RC:Found objects and constructive recycling can produce profound energies in their transformation into artwork. During my time at Duncan of Jordanstone College, I was struck by reading of the talismanic power of certain objects. A stone, for instance, with the natural marking “NAV” (Romany for NAME) was an object of great desire and power. What gets interesting is the placing of unrelated objects, and the ability to “recharge”, by placing them in a new context. It’s like two objects colliding to generate a third, a much more interesting scenario. I am currently using fishing weights as counterbalances, pallet blocks in tandem with new texts can engage poetry and metaphor (EUR – eka), and former metal food containers to convey new messages.

A found object can be anything produced by industry or nature which can trigger a fascination with material and text, text frequently being the progenitor.

To see more of Robin Campbell’s work please go to www.fertilespace.co.uk

To see his listing in the Artists’ Directory in Aesthetica Magazine issue 58 pick up a copy at www.aestheticamagazine.com/shop

Credit:
Image 1-And greed, too, has its heroes. Courtesy of the artist
Image 2 – Don’t walk away Renee. Courtesy of the artist.