Essay by Josie Bland Lecturer in Art History

New Essay on the work of Hannah Campion by Josie Bland Lecturer in Art History

Entering Hannah Campion’s studio one is immediately aware of being surrounded by some very serious work. By this I mean that there is an obvious intelligence behind the images, they question and challenge, pushing at the boundaries of what painting is.

Whilst the whole body of work dazzles, there is some that particularly arrests the eye.

A large upright canvas has delicate forms of blurred and brilliant colour, hinting at the sea life seen in the artist’s underwater explorations. The eye travels round but is stopped by some delicate calligraphic red markings that appear to float on the surface causing an oscillation between flatness and pictorial depth. This and other works contain areas of clear varnish that reflect the surroundings thus creating a tension caused by the interaction of the physical world with the formal elements of the painting.

In another large work the brilliance of the colour becomes chemical and saturatingly sweet, but it is pulled back from this kitsch edge by more calligraphic mark making. Recent work explores the qualities of torn paper as it creates a drawing in air.

Paintings are stacked everywhere; some satisfyingly fully resolved; others in a state of becoming. What is obvious is the testing and retesting, the working on and working over that is happening in the name of research.

Hannah Campion’s work can be firmly placed at the recent end of a trajectory of formalist enquiry that actually began at the end of the nineteenth century and which is constantly being reinvented by those painters for whom narrative is secondary to an enquiry about the nature of painting itself.

Josie Bland

Lecture in Critical Theory

University of Teesside