Our next addition to the ISACS Artist Spotlight is an interview and studio tour video with visual artist, performer, musician and multi-talented, multidisciplinary artist Tom Campbell.
Tom, you’re a man of many talents! Visual art, papier-mâché, puppetry, music, clowning, street performance, walkabout, community work, juggling, unicycle… What was your path into all this work?
I’m primarily a visual artist, especially in the last few years I’ve really focused on that as my bread and butter. I always wanted to do art. I went to art college. I didn’t finish it, but after leaving art college I lived in an art community in southwest Scotland and from that I got into a lot of other areas of creativity. I did a little bit of performing then, I used to busk on the street since I was 16 playing music. I guess my way is always to find a way. I travelled and lived in France and Italy selling art on the street.
Then I got more into circus when I came to Cork in 2001. I met people in Cork Community Circus [now Circus Factory], got into unicycle and other basic circus skills. I could already juggle at that point, I think. My main focus nowadays is trying to earn a living through visual art, which I find easier than through circus. With performance, I always did my own little shows, I was never very good at chasing down festivals and promoting my performances.
I saw your Clayhead show in Galway years ago. Where did that come from? Were you working with clay, and putting it on your head seemed like a logical evolution?
Yeah, pretty much. That was about twenty years ago, in art college. Then people asking me to perform it in different places. It was just an experiment and became a performance. It was a very natural evolution. I did it in Galway years ago. Busking, not as part of a festival. But have performed that show quite widely and still will perform it.
What’s the experience like of performing it?
Well, you can’t see anything. It’s nice when you can hear the crowd, hear the clapping and everything. It’s a very intense, physical experience, performing it, because by the end it’s a lot of clay on my head. It gets quite heavy. I tend to finish it when I’m too tired to carry on. I enjoy doing it, as a performance.
You’ve done a fair bit of walkabout work, like the Ballheads. And in the video you showed us a papier-mâché boob. You mentioned a pregnant men walkabout?
Yeah. We probably shouldn’t have had boobs. The direction of that performance went towards acting rather than clowning. We were men dressed in men’s clothes. So rather than men dressed as pregnant women, we were men dressed up as pregnant men. I did take a photo of a friend dressed up in a woman’s maternity dress, and I think that was funnier. It was more ridiculous. It was a bit more clown-based rather than pretending we were just men who were pregnant.
Where did that idea come from?
I’m not sure. It probably came from putting a ball up my jumper. “Look, I’m pregnant!” and thinking this would make a good walkabout. We only did it a couple of times. The message was that we should have more respect for mothers. I think it’s good to have a message in these things. The guy who directed it was quite strict that we couldn’t take the piss out of pregnancy. Pregnancy is a very special time for women and you can’t ridicule it. I don’t think we were, though. It was about fun. We weren’t ridiculing it in a nasty way, so I think that was perhaps overthinking it. We could’ve happily done it dressed in maternity dresses.
I did get maternity dresses made but they’ve never been used, so they’re still there.
So that’s a walkabout experience waiting to happen?
Hopefully, yeah. Then there’s another one we didn’t get any proper documentation of, called The Amazing Foreheads. It’s a bit silly, just these big rubber foreheads. A walkabout with three people dressed in suits with these big foreheads. Again, it’s funny because it’s totally ridiculous.
Were the pregnant men also dressed in suits?
No, they weren’t, but there’s something about suits that I quite like. There’s another performance we did – well, I did it on my own – just watching an ice cream melt on the street, wearing a suit. And we tried to get ten people to do it. Some of them came wearing suits, but not everyone had a suit. Ballheads was all suits as well. I think it’s quite a good costume to have.
There’s something brilliant about taking the suit, the most “normal” outfit in the western world, and using that as the costume of the absurd.
Yeah, exactly.
So, you said “watching an ice cream melt on the street while wearing a suit.” Was the ice cream on the ground or what are we talking here?
No, I was holding it in my hand.
And you just hold it up and stare at it melting?
Yeah. It took a long time. It took a lot longer than I thought actually, I think about 40 minutes. I bit the bottom of the cone so it dripped out the bottom.
That’s brilliant.
It’s kind of silly. The idea to do it with ten people – I think if you got ten people to do it, it would make quite the impact. Get ten people to do anything, other things as well, but spread around the city. So you come across people doing these bizarre things, the same thing, in different places. I think that would be quite funny.
Have you done much training in clown, or are you more self-taught?
I did loads of clowning workshops over the years. No long-term ones, just a week at a time. I’ve probably done ten or fifteen of those. I liked John Lee. I like the ones that are playful rather than serious. Another one I really enjoyed was Fraser Hooper. He does a show with big boxing gloves. They were the best ones I went to.
Another big aspect of your practice is the papier-mâché dogs, is that right?
Yeah, that’s a repeat project. The Dog Project. It’s to make a hundred dogs each time. It’s a community based project to work with as many people as possible. I like the project. It’s happened six times. The minimum is six weeks with a group, because the dogs are made to be really strong. It’s roughly a day’s work to make a dog, but it’s hard to say when you split it up. I’ve done it in various settings. I did it in Carlow in schools, which was relatively easy. Last time I did it was in a hospital-type setting in Alba in Italy, working with children who came in from schools, but also people with intellectual disabilities. It was a nice combination to work with both at the same time.
At the close of the project when you’ve got all your dogs made, is there something you always do with them?
The idea is to make a hundred dogs and take them on a walk around the city and put them in different positions like a line, a pile, a circle. That’s the celebration of the work. It’s a fun event, it’s very good fun. I like that project a lot. It’d be nice to do variations of it as well, like if someone wanted a different animal being made, that’d be quite nice.
Any specific animals in mind?
I’d like to make a rhino, and an elephant. But that wouldn’t be a hundred, that’d be just one big one. I’d like to do a rhino that you could move about as a parade piece. One of the problems is you’d need a really big space to work in, and another problem is the climate. It’s not a great climate for papier-mâché. It doesn’t dry very fast here, and it’s not easy finding big spaces.
Any papier-mâché projects coming up?
I’m proposing it for a place in Cork. I’m also applying for a bursary to do bronze sculpting. I’ll hopefully be going to the Philippines in December. I was in touch with an orphanage there. All going well I’ll hopefully do some volunteering with them. Papier-mâché probably, and maybe some juggling and making juggling equipment.
You had puppets in your video as well. Can you tell me about your experience making or using them?
It was a shame we only did it a couple of times, but we did a show about aliens. Very musically-based show, lots of funk-type music. It was quite good. My friend made a spaceship. I made most of the puppets and then we – I’ve done a couple of puppet shows. I do this thing called the TV show where I sit in a TV, I do puppets in that, but it’s not very good puppetry, it’s not very polished. I do like when you see a good puppet show, it can be amazing. I haven’t done much myself. They’re a bit like masks, they’re a big thing in themselves. But I’m more drawn to masks and wigs than puppets.
I was curious about that. In your video there were a number of wigs featured. Are the wigs a form of mask?
Yeah, they are. Once you’ve got a wig on you can change bit, like a mask. I guess it’s a good laugh to mess about with wigs on.
Do you keep your eye out all the time for wigs that stand out, or suggest something to you?
Yeah, I do, but I also just pick up general wigs. The wigs I have are cheap wigs that have been neglected. I have one – the blonde curly one – it’s so neglected it almost looks funny. It’s a really, really bad wig. In some ways it’s funny because it’s so bad. A good wig is really quite amazing. A bad wig can be more ridiculous.
You mentioned a ‘TV show’ where you ‘sit in a TV’. Can you explain that to me?
Well, I saw two girls in Athens on the street with a cardboard box TV. They were sitting, watching each other, with face paint, talking in Greek so I couldn’t understand it but I really enjoyed it. So I took the idea and tried it myself. So I think sometimes ideas are very… I don’t know, it’s just an idea, well that’s someone else’s idea… there’s certain ideas that you probably shouldn’t use… but I don’t think that’s how it always is… for example if someone started putting clay on their head I couldn’t really go ‘you can’t do that!’. Anyway, I found an old wooden TV in a skip. It’s pretty bashed up. So it’s various little shows, like cooking shows, or a DIY show, or a natural history show, or a police camera action show.
Do you put the TV on your head, or… ?
No, I have a table, and I sit inside the table with the TV on top. I’ve taken the screen and everything out, and there’s a hole cut in the tabletop, and I have a seat hanging in it so I can sit inside the table with my head sticking up into the TV. I’ve got a tablecloth that hangs down the front so you can’t see me, I’m just ‘on the TV’.
So you just took it out on the street, just set it up and went for it? Or was it part of some event or festival?
I’ve done it on the street as a busking thing. I’ve done it in a few little festivals. I’ve more done that when I do solo shows, which isn’t very often. If I do an exhibition I might do a performance. I used to do shows in pubs. Fairly small things. It would be more like that, really.
And your main focus at the moment is on visual arts?
Yeah. I’ve got quite a few projects. I’m hoping to do some more bronze casting, likely next year. I’d like to do stone carving. I’d like to do more sculpture. Saying that, my space is totally full, and painting is easier to sell. I need more of a shed for sculpture. Out of all the art, sculpture is the one I really enjoy. I haven’t performed so much recently. I still think about it a bit. I’d like to do slightly more experimental stuff again. I’m not entirely sure when that’ll happen. I’ll have to start practicing unicycle again, and juggling. It would be nice to do more clowny stuff.
Do you have a daily practice or routine?
I come to the studio pretty much every day and work on something. I have a couple of commissions I’m working on at the moment. I tend to start late in the morning or early afternoon, and then I end up staying late. We’re able to cook here, which is nice. As far as performing I don’t tend to do very many rehearsals. I kind of have an idea and then I try it. In some ways it’s not a good way to work because it’s a lot more stressful because you don’t really know what you’re doing. But you can be a lot more free and spontaneous that way. You do have a plan, you’re not totally improvising. But it leaves bit more room for improvising perhaps. I like that.
What’s your opinion on the current climate for artists in Ireland?
I think Ireland isn’t a bad country to live in as an artist, though the housing situation which also effects studios and lack of studios is very difficult. I tend to always find a way, which works, though I have lived in places perhaps most people might not live in, to afford to be an artist. There is Arts Council funding. I’ve had that though only with a lot of help. I find it a little annoying that they only want one type of proposal, and there’s an idea that you almost have to change your practice to suit a funding application. The Basic Income for Artists would be amazing! But i would be happily surprised if they brought it in. I think perhaps the amount could be less and paid to all full time artists?
Tom has an upcoming papier-mâché workshop on Sunday 1st December in Outlaw Studios, Marina Commercial Park, Center Park Road, Cork. For more information or to book, contact tomartyc@gmail.com
