Fernando do Campo: To companion a companion
'To companion a companion' is an exhibition by Fernando do Campo that proposes humans as a companion species to birds.
With one foot in the field and the other in the archives, Fernando do Campo focuses on ‘companioning’ as an artistic strategy, researching the knotted histories of urban multispecies encounters through listening, painting, archiving and plural histories.
About the Artist:
Fernando do Campo (b. Mar del Plata, Argentina 1987) is an artist and academic based in Sydney where he is Art Domain Coordinator at UNSW Art & Design. Since 2015 he also produces work as the HSSH (House Sparrow Society for Humans). Fernando’s practice engages the histories of non-human animals via anthropomorphism, speculative fiction and archival research. The global south and the legacies of colonialism and modernism that hold these animal narratives are a focus for both his research and the material studio explorations. Recent projects have focused on the possibility of painting as a diaristic archival process and listening as a performative gesture through which to complicate the anthropocentric gaze of both the maker and viewer of artworks. Fernando has presented solo exhibitions in Australia and the USA, and group exhibitions internationally. He is a Sir General John Monash Foundation Scholar, the first artist to ever receive this prestigious award for emerging Australian leaders to study abroad. Fernando is currently working on an ongoing research project with the Green-Wood Cemetery and the Brooklyn Museum, New York and an iterative solo exhibition being co-presented by Contemporary Art Tasmania, UNSW Galleries and PICA across 2021-22 and touring nationally in 2023. He was Artist-in-Residence at the State Library of NSW 2021-22 and is represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney.
To Companion a Companion is a collaborative project by Contemporary Art Tasmania, UNSW Galleries and PICA toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.
Contemporary Art Tasmania is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its principal arts funding body, by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy and is assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts.
Image: Fernando do Campo, Pishing in the archive, 2021, single channel HD video, (production still).