Bonnie Camplin
Born 1970 London – Lives and works in London
Bonnie Camplin, with full magical, artistic intention produces photographs, videos, drawings, performances, music and an experimental nightclub through her practice broadly described by Camplin as the “Invented Life”. She compares the power of artistic intention to casting a spell or science fiction. Much like works of science fiction put into motion our technological future reality; works of art also have a ghostly relationship with the future. By placing full focus and intention into forms that represent her unconscious desires, Camplin casts an aesthetic spell on the future events of her life (thus an ‘invented’ one). Camplin began the practice of her “Imagined Life” studying Fine Art – Film and Video (1992), followed by Advanced Photography (1996) at Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, London. She is currently a lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmith’s University, London and in 2012, she lead a workshop on surveillance and data mining for the Wide Open School project at the Hayward Gallery. Camplin’s workshop was not of future surveillance technology or events, instead she proposed how to participate in a society founded on data collection technologies like Hito Steyerl’s recent video works. Following on her theme of surveillance, Camplin produced the installation Needle Walks into a Haystack for the 2014 Liverpool Biennial – a proposal for technologically enhanced observation of information patters in tiny objects called DSV Technology. For extending her interest in surveillance from the personal to the military in her exhibition The Military Industrial Complex at South London Gallery, Camplin received a nomination for the 2015 Turner Prize. Applying theories of warfare, witchcraft, quantum theory and philosophy to surveillance as a medium of reality formation, she asks how this medium leads to frustrating categorization. Camplin has also been represented in London at the Tate, the Barbican and the Institute of Contemporary Art.
Born 1970 London – Lives and works in London
Bonnie Camplin, with full magical, artistic intention produces photographs, videos, drawings, performances, music and an experimental nightclub through her practice broadly described by Camplin as the “Invented Life”. She compares the power of artistic intention to casting a spell or science fiction. Much like works of science fiction put into motion our technological future reality; works of art also have a ghostly relationship with the future. By placing full focus and intention into forms that represent her unconscious desires, Camplin casts an aesthetic spell on the future events of her life (thus an ‘invented’ one). Camplin began the practice of her “Imagined Life” studying Fine Art – Film and Video (1992), followed by Advanced Photography (1996) at Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, London. She is currently a lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmith’s University, London and in 2012, she lead a workshop on surveillance and data mining for the Wide Open School project at the Hayward Gallery. Camplin’s workshop was not of future surveillance technology or events, instead she proposed how to participate in a society founded on data collection technologies like Hito Steyerl’s recent video works. Following on her theme of surveillance, Camplin produced the installation Needle Walks into a Haystack for the 2014 Liverpool Biennial – a proposal for technologically enhanced observation of information patters in tiny objects called DSV Technology. For extending her interest in surveillance from the personal to the military in her exhibition The Military Industrial Complex at South London Gallery, Camplin received a nomination for the 2015 Turner Prize. Applying theories of warfare, witchcraft, quantum theory and philosophy to surveillance as a medium of reality formation, she asks how this medium leads to frustrating categorization. Camplin has also been represented in London at the Tate, the Barbican and the Institute of Contemporary Art.