Artists
Tess Campbell
Sam Mountford
Curator
Lucy Bleach
Mona Foma 2022
Opening: 5.30pm Friday 28 January, 2022
Public Program: 2.00pm Saturday 29 January, 2022
Exhibition: 29 January – 6 March 2022
Location: Contemporary Art Tasmania
Tess Campbell and Sam Mountford have created a spatial installation to present their new film On the Shoreline, which has been influenced by the research of Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies scientist, Peter Puskic. Boundaries explores states of observation and vision, meshing scientific research with personal stories, conflating the temporal and spatial scales implicit within our contemporary materials and lives. Using the ‘shoreline’ as a strategy to probe the environmental and existential concerns of our time, Boundaries seeks to dissolve the conditions of knowledge and reason to which we are attached.
In Boundaries, Campbell and Mountford create a multi-dimensional environment for their new film On the Shoreline to be taken in. Adopting a biomimetic approach to their gallery installation, they draw on the spiral structure of a seashell, or the pattern of an ocean eddy, to construct an architectural framework that is at once internal and external, open and enclosed, to navigate and view sequences of their film. The curving structure, which echoes its own form, enables a porosity of viewing through its skeletal frame, allowing the light and sound from each discreet film sequence to seep across the screening spaces, a kind of contamination. Utilising various lens-based technologies, the film explores frangible states of observation and vision, meshing the processes of scientific research with the fathoming of personal stories, conflating the temporal and spatial scales implicit within our contemporary materials and lives. Boundaries proposes a softening of edges, anticipating how something might contaminate, be enveloping and closer than breath.
– Lucy Bleach – essay excerpt
Read the full essay here (PDF)
Read the Guest Curator Conversaion here (PDF)
Sam Mountford is an artist and writer living in Mora, Portugal. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of Creative Arts, University of Tasmania and attended the Maumaus Independent Study Programme, Portugal in 2019. He works between Europe and Australia, exhibiting in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United States and Australia. Sam has produced projects for festivals including Dark Mofo, HOBIENNALE, Reykjavík International Film Festival, Ci.CLO Bienal Fotografia do Porto, and Fotofestiwal.
Tess Campbell is a media artist and freelance videographer based in nipaluna/Hobart, lutrawita/Tasmania.Tess completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of Creative Arts, University of Tasmania. Her practice is preoccupied with speculative fiction in film, she produces solo projects and regularly collaborates with artists and film makers, working across areas of dance, theatre and performance. Tess recently curated the Constance ARI and Tasmanian Prison Service exhibition The Pink Palace: in Isolation (2021) and has produced work for the Ten Days on an Island festival, HOBIENNALE, Dark Mofo and the Museum of Old and New Art.
Sam and Tess have maintained a long-standing collaborative practice since 2015, producing work for Dark Mofo (2019), Sawtooth ARI (2018), HOBIENNALE (2019), recess (2019) and Visual Bulk (2017). In 2018 they won the Tasmanian Portrait Prize. Their current project was shortlisted for the Portuguese Film Fund (2021)
