Cressida Campbell
Join Cressida Campbell on a tour of her life's work including personal reflections and insight into her unique artistic practice.
In each room, the works are organised by theme and you can hear a description of these themes from Curator, Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax.
Curator's introduction
Curator Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax introduces the exhibition
This major survey celebrates the career of the acclaimed Australian artist Cressida Campbell whose unerring eye for colour and design transforms the everyday into the extraordinary. For over four decades, Campbell has used her unique process to create meticulously detailed woodblock paintings from which she now handprints a single woodcut. Her elegant and dryly humorous compositions focus on the humble details of immediate surroundings: from food scraps to the washing-up, an unmade bed to gardening tools. She transforms these elements into stylised compositions that balance line, form, tone and pattern. Her works reflect the importance of place and show how art can bear witness to a life.
Cressida Campbell features over 140 woodblock paintings and unique woodcut prints, including rare pairings of these mirrored images. There are also paintings, drawings, studio materials and works from art school that give insight into her artistic development. The exhibition opens with a series of thematic rooms that explore still-life compositions and interiors observed within the artist’s house and garden. At the heart of the survey is a presentation on Campbell’s distinctive studio technique, accompanied by a documentary film and the artist’s own salon-hang of her early art. The exhibition ends with panoramic views of Gadigal and Cammeraygal Country around Sydney Harbour and beyond.
