Sheryl Campbell
PHOTOGRAPHER
Sheryl plays with photography’s relationship to meaning and provides an ambiguous truth, drawing on the perception of what may be real. She highlights recent feminist issues in New Zealand by experimenting with various ways to communicate concerns and drawing from various media sources like corporate sexual harassment and problematic youth behaviours. She examined articles on feminist concerns and recent sexual violence cases in NZ while researching artists who, like Sheryl, counter the male gaze.
Works And Process
Clean Dolly Clean
Alongside photography, Sheryl created two films during her studies in 2015 and 2016 called Dolly and Clean Clean. These showcased a convergence of everyday life with the artificial world of real-life automatons. Filming took place outside allowing for an unassuming cast of characters to respond authentically to what they were witnessing. The actress for Dolly dragged a blow-up doll around the public arena of Wynyard Quarter, Auckland.
Later on Dribbleglass was made in 2017. This was photographed in the studio as more literal reference to problematic issues. Dribbleglass illustrated the physical, emotional and spiritual disintegration to the male's well-being through the choices some men make in their viewing habits. Through camera technique, montage and editing methods, she achieved a metaphor for dissolution.
Breathe Dolly Breathe
Breathe Dolly Breathe on the other hand displays the the casual camaraderie of two young men, out for a fun night, who stumble across an unconscious teenage girl. Their attraction reflects the consequences of the passive consumption of pornography.
Sheryl uses a large projector to display the face of ‘dolly’ while behind the screen two male actors proceed to perform unconsented sexual acts to the doll. Inspired by a true event, she wanted to provoke thought about this type of casual violence that still happens today.
Sheryl’s’ Breathe Dolly Breathe video exhibitions were hosted at ‘The Visibility Paradigm’ in 2018. A flimsy, clammy plastic door covering was installed that viewers would have to interact with. This lead into a room with a screen barrier displaying her works and created the feeling of being a participant of a ‘peep show’, substantiating the message while achieving her feminist anti-pornography standpoint.
Actresses were filmed performing walk missions to address the entrenched pervasiveness of sexuality in society. They walked in an exaggeratedly slow way, appearing as though they were acting out in their own strange psychological hinterland and disconnected from the world. The films were designed as spectacles to captivate viewers and when exhibited side by side and looped, they created a variety of infinite juxtapositions.
Surface
Tension
Surface Tension references a young woman arriving at her first day of work. She has to run the gauntlet of unspoken gender assumptions and evaluations, standing unmoved in a vitrine, as if frozen in the moment of just having arrived at the corporate reception.
In the video blue goop dribbles slowly and incessantly down, until the vase is filled, and the ‘new recruit’ becomes obscured, alluding to her voice being drowned out.
Sheryl's projects today take a more narrative approach and are less discernible, and slower to absorb. Sheryl now looks to make projects that take a more open-ended approach to question these gendered sexual behaviours and norms in society by creating work that is more curious and undefined. Sheryl's work still alludes to problematic behaviours and serve as decidedly unerotic and behavioural illustrations to critique societal issues.