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HAL CAMPLIN
Location
Bristol
Website
Social Media
Media
Mixed Media; Performance; Installation
Title of works
Spinal Chord (2022)
wood, felt, steel, dirt
Bio
Hal Camplin is a mainly self-taught artist born in 1978 in London. He settled and set up a studio in Bristol in 2002 and engaged with the artist-led scene across the South West UK. Hal is known for his punky D.I.Y. approach to art and uses whatever material comes to hand. This manifests in painting, sculpture, assemblages, film and raw often surreal performances.
Hal’s early creative drive was focused on intense paintings and drawings relating to his chronic pain and spinal condition. To build on this invigorating but isolated practice, Hal set up an artist group called Kangaroo Kourt (2002-7) informed by the conviction that art is a doing thing- a social thing. This approach led to collaborations with artists across Britain.
Hal’s work investigates themes such as Illness, Identity and the Unconscious and he was featured on Radio 4’s Today programme discussing his giant light box drawings inspired by scans from brain surgery. His performance work as Barry the Badger and his band Badgertrap took him on tours up to Edinburgh and over to Berlin.
A second operation on his brain in his 30s led him to a period of depression and breakdown. He had to stop working but re-emerged with a show called Illness and Anarchy (2017) charting his shift through pain to humour and back again. This developed into a mobile social art project, When Pain Meets Art (2016-2019) where he went out to collaborate with people struggling to stay creative due to their experience of physical and emotional illness.
After studying art psychotherapy (2019-2022) Hal was able to return to painting during the pandemic and rediscovered the freedom in painting and the connection between a healthy body and movement. He studied active imagination (a form of conscious meditative dream work developed by Carl Jung) and has written a dissertation about the use of active imagination with art to tackle the psychosocial effects of chronic pain. Most recently he has participated in several exhibitions in hospitals and health centres in Bristol with a more joyful approach to painting.
In 1995 I began experiencing chronic pain due to a spinal condition called syringomyelia. I was 17 years old when I painted imagery inspired by MRI scans of my brain and spine. I got lost in the detail to avoid the impact of the bigger changes psychologically and emotionally. Art became for me a matter of how I would survive in the world.
Over 25 years I have used different forms of art to explore this survival mode. It began with an attitude of resistance and anger towards the universe. I learnt how to be different and also belong, and to be with pain as well as joy by engaging with creative communities. In a project I curated called Illness and Anarchy (2017) I expressed my narrative of pain through art and interacted with other artists living with chronic illness. I finished this project thinking of illness as an opportunity to explore pain not just as energy but also consciousness in its widest sense.
Recent work encompasses highly coloured painting, clay work, sculptural installation and continued performances as a giant badger. I also use Jungian active imagination after training as an art psychotherapist and have greater belief in art as a way to heal and transform not just to survive.
