* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Rachel Campbell is originally from New Zealand and now lives and works in Durham, NC.
Rachel explains the work by saying, “My work is best described as a very specific form of documentary. I am constructing a body of work that depicts and interprets the complex interactions between our objects, our interiors, and our environments. Why do we collect the objects that we do?, and what do they say about us? But our objects are not just isolated insights into people whom we know and value. They combine in complex ways to create our interior spaces. I am repeatedly drawn to depicting and interpreting variations in this often unnoticed but deeply constitutive interaction. So even though people are seldom directly depicted in my work they are always present within it. Our objects and interiors are situated within broader environments that have both spatial and temporal dimensions, and I am drawn to the depiction and interpretation of these dynamics. I celebrate the urban contexts that surround us. Often I am drawn to elements within them that others view as everyday and humdrum but that I find delightful. I see things that other people tend to overlook and bring them to my viewer’s attention. But I frequently try to introduce the narratives that I see underlying these contexts and elements as well—narratives that, again, many people overlook but that I observe are present, informing the situation. The end result is a highly observant but distinctively interpreted account of our environments.”
