Harbouring Delusion 

Campbell Mcconnell

26th June - 31st July 2022

Does a sin eater physically eat sin or do they collect and accept unwanted knowledge?

Campbell has raised the floor, literally. Platforms have been built that house ceramic pools or windows, that frame screens. Rat Catcher, Purple Maker, Sin Eater and Leech Collector all wait to be chosen. But is it a stage? Maybe it’s a cave, or a hovel, a cot? 

Drawing from his recent series ‘​​Mediaeval Curriculum Vitas’ and video game culture, along with a practice of creating raised habitats. Campbell’s new work ‘Harbouring Delusion’ presents a medieval disjuncture in the gallery.

Wooden stilts precariously support a floor boarded platform, you travel up to look into video windows, but duck to miss the beam. Foot nervously tempting each board before placing your weight on it. 

The character’s IRL turntable motions are mocking digital slickness. These characters are too clean, too knowing, they’re from somewhere else. Music plays recalling Limmy’s Falconhoof character in ‘Adventure Call.’ A neo-medieval sensibility is emerging. A time remembered, a time re-made. An elderly Scottish man narrates a feeling of a time. 

“The unknown stench an intolerable odour with senseless repetition occupied a cot or hovel in aching suspension, a forbidden darkness lurked. Wax amber, fish, timber and furs, Tin and wool, silver and cloth.

They gorged on wheat, rye, barley mixed with beans and peas, curds, oatmeal, cake and herrings. Honey cider mead and metheglin, bread soups and stews, fruit in straw dried in the sun and persevered in honey. Verjuice raw onions, boiled beans, raw turnips. Cabbage, nettles, reeds, briars and pea shells.”

Tessellated ochre forms frame these screen worlds. A huge black snail with demon rider sludge along the wooden boards. A rat is seen underneath. A town infested by nature, causing ailments to the populace, they seek natures cure blood sucking cure and offload sin. 

What was your mediaeval profession? What did you do in 500AD? Can we change the future by re-imaging the past?

Campbell Mcconnell’s recent exhibitions and education include; 'A general interest in the general end' Five Years Gallery, London (2019,) Conditions Studio Programme (2021-2022,) School of the Damned (2019-2021.)