#12 | Nadia Hernández & Jon Campbell

Nadia Hernández’s multi-disciplinary practice reflects a process of bearing witness to the loss of home and the symbolic power of memory and memorialisation. Informed by her experience as a Venezuelan woman living in Australia, and positioning herself both within and outside the Venezuelan diaspora, Hernández makes art as a means to connect with a sense of place that exists beyond psychic and geographic boundaries. Hernández's practice is informed by a rich assemblage of cultural, political and familial histories, negotiating complex narratives and weaving the personal and the political to create a highly recognisable visual language expressed through textiles, paintings, paper constructions, sculptures and installations. Her works weave together the complexities of memory, despair, hope and reconciliation, reminding us that these opposing sensations often co-exist.

With his use of words and phrases as imagery, Jon Campbell captures aspects of his culture that are both lived and observed, that are local, national and international and that can be spoken, written, sung, and read. Campbell’s masterfully realized paintings, cutouts, banners, neon’s, flags and songs demonstrate his love of suburbia and it’s vernacular. Popular music, printing, design and sport also feature heavily in his practice. His works define not only the look of the world in which Campbell lives, but the accent and humour of it’s language and how signs can articulate it’s culture and history. These signs have a beauty and celebration about them that encourages belief.

In-conversation with Nadia Hernández & Jon Campbell available via Apple Podcasts here or Vimeo below.

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EXHIBITION INFO

JON CAMPBELL & NADIA HERNÁNDEZ
Sure, a coffee sounds great
2023
coloured photocopies and drawings, wallpaper glue
dimensions variable to site

Comprising setlists and drawings, Sure, a coffee sounds great is a collaborative project by artists Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell. Campbell has been collecting setlists from bands for several decades now and frequently incorporates them into his installations and artworks. Hernández has included a body of work from her loose and intuitive drawing practice that covers her studio walls, offering points of departure for new work. Together there is a lyrical pop voice that reflects their shared commitment to making work that is vital, accessible and about everyday struggles, feelings and desires.

Both artists mobilise the rhythms, harmonies and dissonances of written and pictorial language to deal with experiences of relocation, questions around identity, class, cultural and national value systems. Within this, they offer their voices both in direct political protest and in celebration and critique of everyday life, values and relationships.

For Hernández – born in Mérida, Venezuela, and now based between Melbourne and Sydney – her practice is a way of keeping alive her connection to friends, family and place while calling on the spirit of protest to unsettle the given global disorder that has displaced her and her family.

And for Campbell – born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and growing up in Melbourne’s western suburbs – his work is a wryly humorous exploration of the layered and complicated contingencies of the ever-shifting Australian condition as it is embraced, repressed, and rebelled against.

Guided by their approaches to thinking and making and reflecting on their places in the world, both artists’ works evidence a warm feeling of inclusion that is fundamentally social in nature.

Courtesy the Artists and Darren Knight Gallery and STATION Melbourne/Sydney.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Hernández lives and works in Sydney. She received a BFA from Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (2008) and a Certificate IV in design from Shillington College, Sydney (2009). Selected exhibitions include Beneath the Surface, Behind the Scenes, Heide Museum of Art (Melbourne, 2023); Speech Patterns: Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell, Art Gallery of Western Australia (Perth, 2022);  In the fibre of her being, Fairfield City Museum and Gallery (Sydney, 2021); Miffy and Friends, QUT Art Museum (Brisbane, 2020) [touring]; NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship, Artspace (Sydney, 2020); Entre Todo, Todxs (Among Everything, Everyone), Verge Gallery (Sydney, 2020); Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane, 2019); There is Fiction in the Spaces Between: John Fries Award 2019 Finalist Exhibition, UNSW Galleries (Sydney, 2019); and Este Es Mi Ejército (This Is My Army), Firstdraft (Sydney, 2018). Hernández was the winner of the 2019 Churchie National Emerging Art Prize and a recipient of the Bundanon Trust Artist-in-Residence program. Her work is held in the public collections of Artbank, National Gallery of Victoria, and Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Hernández is represented by STATION, Melbourne/Sydney.

nadiahernandez.com

@nando_nandez

Campbell lives and works in Melbourne. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne (1982) and a Graduate Diploma of Painting from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne (1985). Selected solo exhibitions include Speech Patterns: Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell, Art Gallery of Western Australia (Perth, 2022); Carry on like a pork chop, Monash University Prato Centre (Prato, 2019); MCA Collection: Jon Campbell, Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, 2017); Just Sing What You Feel, NGV, Federation Square (Melbourne, 2012); and Stacks on, Melbourne Art Foundation Artist Commission, Melbourne Art Fair (Melbourne, 2010). Selected group exhibitions include Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, 2023); Who's Afraid of Public Space?, ACCA (Melbourne, 2022); Play On: The Art of Sport - 10 Years of the Basil Sellers Art Prize, UQ Art Museum (Brisbane, 2018); Takeo Hanzawa, Devin Troy Strother & Jon Campbell, Gallery Side 2 (Tokyo, 2015); It’s gonna take a lotta love, Franklin Street Works (Connecticut, 2015); Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, Foundation for Graphic and Plastic Arts (Nogent-sur-Marne, Ile de France, 2009); and From Walden to Vegas, La Foundation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques (Paris, 2009). Campbell’s work is held in the public collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the National Portrait Gallery, Monash University Museum of Art, Artbank, Australia, and the Australian Football League, Melbourne.

Campbell is represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney.

joncampbell.info

@joncampbellart