1988 Exhibitions at Central School of Arts and Crafts,
and The Victoria and Albert Museum

A review by Cathy Courtney, Art Monthly, November, London

Ken Campbell: an Artist's Books

Two shows, one at the Central School this November and another at the V&A in February 1989, provide an opportunity to see the spread of books Ken Campbell has been working on since the 1970s. It's a forceful body of work and although the books vary in form and mood each is stamped with the very strong character of its creator whether or not he makes a direct appearance in either text or images. Some of the potent, alliterative incantations are addressed to 'you', with the poet cast in his ancient role as storyteller and seer, hinting at deeds done and truths overlooked in fragments of text which imply plots and wrongs masterminded on an epic scale.

In many of the books layers of narrative and images run parallel stories through the pages. This can be seen most clearly in AbaB, his most accessible work, made in 1983/4 when Campbell held the Brinkley Fellowship in the Department of Graphic Design at Norwich School of Art. Unlike most of his subsequent books which tend to have grown up around an existing poem, this Leporello was the result of a chance conversation at a time when he was looking for a subject. Three different type faces form parallel bands which stretch through the book, each horizontal line a different colour, scale and rhythm but linked in subject matter to one another. Its triumph is to show the reader that, by his own action of setting the pages in flowing motion, he has unconsciously echoed the tale he is simultaneously absorbing and by doing this the book binds its audience in a sudden, light-hearted intimacy.

In other words the strata are harder to absorb in their entirety but the fragments have accumulative and unnerving effect. Campbell puts the reader on his guard, setting him looking nervously over his shoulder as he travels in search of the narrative treads; as the artist says, these books are not for fire- side browsing. The richness of the language repays reading aloud and by using different styles of speech Campbell is able to draw he reader back and forth in time, plaiting ribbons from our shared historical past (whether actual or fabulous) along with references to his personal present. 'AbaB' has a casual conversation at its centre, but 'A Knife Romance' (1988, ed 25) contains a measured exchange between kings - the words made virtually audible by varying the typeface - a build-up to battle in which one senses the cost will be vast. This ancient public bloodbath is mirrored by a private tale of a sheath-knife owned by the seventeen year old Campbell which his mother buried in the garden because 'she feared the crimes it might commit me to.' The narrative of this section is displayed in wedges in which the text appears to recede, rather as if it were written on tombstone and its pulsing tone underlines the phallic images of the silver-dusted knife which punctuates the rough-edged pages. At a quieter pitch the 'widow's song' whispers through the book, a memorial to Campbell's now dead mother and gently places the sorrows of a single family alongside those of the regal dynasties of the past. As the book end the strands are drawn together by means of texts linked by colour to an image of the knife's handle.

Man's inhumanity to man is one of the themes that recurs in the books, whether private or public, contrived, accidental or instinctive, but the subject matter is usually well integrated with the process of making the volume itself. 'Father's Hook' (1978, ed 100) is bound between varnished wooden boards, a tribute to the artist's father, a docker who ' worked extremely hard and, therefore, the book is rigorous, reflecting this in the type used, the typography and the way it was made.' The title 'Broken Rules and Double Crosses' (1984, ed 50), immediately presents two levels for interpretation - the suggestion that it will be a story of betrayal and a reference to the physical tools with which Campbell made the the black crosses stamped on his huge sheets of vellum coloured paper. This book comes not only boxed but wrapped in a linen shroud, itself bearing two crosses. The text begins with an excavation and ends with a burial, moving in between through a slow dance of the possible contortions of a crucifix as its arms are articulated into various positions (each one presented in reverse - 'doubled' - on the following sheet, apart from two instances where the angles of the limbs shearing off from the central mast of the cross are identical). It's a sombre progress, flanked by two square prints made up of all the sections of lead type which were used to form the crosses. The text for Broken Rules and Double Crosses adds Jewish and Islamic ref- erences to the Christian emblem which bears the main thrust of the work. On of these explains how 'when the pious made such a thing as a carpet, a mistake or fault was insinuated into the design or manufacture in order that perfection be not achieved by deliberation, let alone chance.' This was due to the belief that perfection was only permissible in the paradise to come, encouraging the wise to claim imperfection, 'not only with humility but also confidence.' (This surely creates the problem that imperfection is the aim and is therefore perfectly achieved?) Imperfection is an element which Campbell also embraces willingly, allowing chance to play its part both in insinuating subject matter into his books and also in their making. Not only will he, to certain extent, discover the design for his pages as he works on the print bed, but he will adapt his text to suit the material available. The most concrete example is in' Horse' (1985, ed 25) based on a Sanskrit poem, where each spread is subdivided by a coloured framework in which four words take the main stage, likening the horse's body to aspects of the universe. Finding he was short on the letter 'g', Campbell invented the word 'BRICHTENING', feeling that it could well have been part of the vocabulary his Celtic ancestors would have used.

In many of Campbell's books there's instant tension between the reined-in anger and dark foreboding of the text and images and the fact that the works are delicately made, elegant vehicles designed to be handled with care and respect. The human animal is demonstrated to be a destructive, misguided force by the action of a man expressing sorrow and mourning - and blame - by the gentlest of means.