Cressida Campbell

Interior with Chinese lantern 2018
woodblock, painted in watercolour
Private collection

Campbell’s painted tondi let us zoom in on her collecting and cultural interests. We see walls hung salon-style with paintings, drawings, and prints; carefully arranged Japanese and Chinese ceramics; richly patterned fabrics and decorative rugs.

In their formal brilliance and conceptual ingenuity, Campbell’s carved and painted woodblocks simultaneously pay homage to the creativity and breathtaking ability of artists and craftspeople of earlier times and cultures.

As Campbell has stated in relation to her tondo works:
‘I find the format of a circle interesting—compositionally, and in the way it creates a voyeuristic tension when you look through it to an interior of any subject’.