Exhibition | holy arm gauntlet
Artist | Tom Campbell
Dates | 7 August – 20 September 2025
Artist Talks + Exhibition Opening | 5:30pm + 6pm Thursday 7 August 2025| RSVP here
Exhibition Statement
holy arm gauntlet presents recent work by Kamberri/Boorloo based artist Tom Campbell positioning embroidery as a location for disagreement. The act of disagreeing is a long-held interest, particularly in the ways in which it both forges and fractures connection. In parallel, Tom considers how poetry might act as a way into navigating this dynamic. If poetry resists the idea that words possess one meaning and by nature embraces ambiguity and plurality, what possibilities does this open up for reframing the ways one experiences the bodily sensation of being ‘in disagreement?’
Artist Statement
holy arm gauntlet
Three things in this context:
- Materially, the work takes as a starting point the idea that embroidery can be an act of embedding and layering, with an interest in what happens when these distinct layerscome into contact withone another. This process of construction is associative, diagrammatic, and I often seek out combinations that might sit in tension with each other.
- I often begin with poetry as a loose structure for the work. I am interested here in what is constructed between the combination of image and text – does it produce something which feels aligned or something that sits in disagreement or a state that resistsresolution.Poetry can also resist interpretation and is open to multiple modes of reading.
- This work sits within but is separate to an overarching project, where I have been working with Zora Pang and Jessica Tanto to explore the nature of disagreements and the way we navigate them.
Artist Biography
Tom is an artist and writer whose work traces muscle memories across his Kadazan/Scottish lineages, through textiles and poetry. He has shown work in Gadigal Nura/Sydney, Naarm/Melbourne, and nipaluna/Hobart, and across Kamberri/Canberra. Recent projects include to be both free and safe, commissioned for the 2024 Canberra Art Biennial, working with artists Joanne Leong and Esther Carlin, and Tension project (working title), a research project with Zora Pang and Jessica Tanto supported through Cahoots Lab 2025, an initiative of You Are Here.
Tom has worked across philanthropy and fundraising, most recently as Development Manager, National Gallery of Australia, and is currently General Manager, pvi collective.
Image | Tom Campbell, Mallarme (to be both free and safe – detail) 2024 | Photography by Cathy Zhang
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