Steven Campbell: Love

Love is an exhibition of twelve large scale multi-media collages made between 1988 and 1991 by Steven Campbell, one of Glasgow’s most celebrated artists.

Campbell began the works on his return to Scotland in 1987 following a five year period of living and working in New York. The collages represent a little known, experimental  area of  Campbell’s practice which also includes clay, plaster and papier mache sculpture, drawing, printmaking and textile design. 

While Campbell’s paintings were often executed with terrific speed - a canvas, he claimed, could be completed in five days - these large scale, predominantly two- dimensional collages were each made over a period of weeks, in part because of the laborious way in which the artist chose to work with material (hand painting and then adhering individual strands of string rather than painting once they were integrated into the collage). However the artist's wife Carol Campbell has also attributed this change of a pace to a need for an activity to accompany a period of reflection and contemplation, a form of therapy through which Campbell could come to terms with the changes in his life following the family's return from America.

Completed at the kitchen table, amid the rhythms of family life the resulting collages are testament to Campbell’s modest needs, his restless imagination and experimental nature but perhaps even more so to his sensitivity to the world around him. In these works we see a manifestation of the most powerful cornerstones of his life, his family, the natural world and his boundless imagination. 

Love is curated by Linsey Young in collaboration with Tramway. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue including a new essay by Michael Bracewell, supported by Creative Scotland.