| Doug Campbell. Photo courtesy of Janice Hathaway |
Doug Campbell was born
in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he still lives. He is an artist who works primarily in collage. When he was a child he discovered the word ‘surrealist’
in a science fiction novel and then was given a small book of surrealist
paintings. This was the first step in an adventure that continues until this
day. He has an ongoing engagement with the international surrealist
movement through correspondence, collective games, and contributions to
publications and group shows.
When did you become
interested in art and when did you start making art? At what point did you
become acquainted with surrealism?
I don’t remember ever not being interested in art, in the widest
sense, from my first picture books and comics onwards. I drew obsessively as a
kid, grew up making and painting models and graduated into making posters for
gigs as a teen and an adult. All this in spite of bad experiences at school,
being told off for talking back to art teachers and having my work torn up in
front of the class. Anything I know about composition, I picked up from Marvel
comics, paperback covers and movie posters. It always mattered.
I first encountered the word ‘surrealist’ in a science fiction novel
as a kid. I asked my parents what it meant and was shown a little book of
paintings that fascinated me. Surrealism by Alfred Schmeller (1956),
part of the Methuen ‘Movements in Modern Art’ series. 24 colour plates, with
Magritte, Tanguy, lots of Ernst. I still have it.
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| Phantoms of regrettable incidents, 2025 |
What is your
technique in making collages? Do you prefer analogue to digital?
Most of my work is analogue. I buy second-hand books from local
charity shops, harvest images that seem to me to have some kind of magic, and
combine them using scissors, glue and scalpel. Final assembly of a collage
usually takes just an afternoon. I work intuitively, guided by colour, texture,
lighting and composition. I imagine the process as something like creating a
toy theatre or a doll’s house. I find the constraints imposed by found source
material productive. They force me to discover scenes that I wouldn’t have
thought of otherwise. Any symbolism is purely unconscious. The title comes
last, suggested by the completed picture. I welcome other people’s
interpretations of my imagery, though these are very rarely offered. When it
happens, it’s like a tarot reading, something to be contemplated.
I have made digital collages occasionally, but it’s an entirely
different experience. You can call up any image you can think of from the
internet, so that sense of discovery isn’t there. There is the temptation to
indulge rather obvious fantasies of one kind or another, or to create didactic
cartoon imagery.
You are creating a
seemingly ongoing collage novel called The Cabinet of Major Weir, which is online. How did this originate? I
assume Ernst’s collage novels were an influence?
I discovered Ernst’s The Hundred Headless Woman in the
university library, and was transfixed. I know people love the antique
cross-hatched texture of the prints Ernst worked with, but I was thrilled
by the dynamic energy they derived from
the pulp fiction that they illustrated. Heroes escape, lovers embrace, villains
gloat. Action-packed romance at every turn. Here was a narrative language I
recognised, but unmoored from its storylines
to express totally new mysteries with the same urgent, compelling power.
I try to tap into that energy using modern source material.
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| The fourth wall, 2025 |
When I first started making collage, it was a slow, uncertain
process. I assembled perhaps half a dozen pieces over a couple of decades.
Then, in 2017, I participated in the Archaeology
of Hope, an extended surrealist game instigated by Merl Fluin and Paul
Cowdell. It’s a long story, but I committed to creating an entire deck of
collaged playing cards over four days and hit the charity shops for
sourcebooks. I had previously been inhibited about cutting up books, but here
was an inexhaustible supply of modern imagery at throwaway prices. Crucially,
the pressure of working to a specific constraint suddenly made everything very
easy, and I swiftly completed the deck.
This suggested the idea of adopting the collage novel as a model for
a creative game: I committed myself to produce a collage every week, to be
shared on the same day like an episode of a TV series. The process quickly
became a routine part of my week, and I’ve been doing it ever since. The
activity is something I look forward to, perhaps even therapeutic. The
completion of a picture delivers the satisfaction of a solved puzzle, and I’m
usually surprised by the final image. Repetition makes it easier to get into
the creative headspace. It has been suggested to me that this repeated practice
could be seen as a form of ritual magic. I hadn’t ever thought of it that way,
but then all I would ever want from magic is to see into other worlds and
dimensions, so there’s that.
The series is divided into fifty-episode ‘novels’. Fifty is an
arbitrary number, but I find each novel still feels like a new start under a
new title. There is no through-plot in the series beyond whatever is happening
in my unconscious, but certain archetypal figures and environments seem to
recur. In retrospect, I can sometimes see the impact of events in my day-to-day
life. Major Weir himself is a legend of my home town, a historic figure
executed for witchcraft. He is supposed to haunt the streets at night, in a
coach drawn by headless horse, and driven by a headless horseman.
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| To charm a salamander, 2025 |
You seem to have a great interest in horror movies – when did this start?
I encountered the imagery of horror movies long before the films
themselves, through pop culture things like Scooby-Doo cartoons, Aurora ‘Glow
in the Dark’ models, Topps bubble gum cards and so on. I was a sixties monster
kid, and I loved it all. The films themselves were shown rarely and late at
night, so it was a very long process of discovery. In the era before digital
media, these were holy relics, dead sea scrolls. Finally getting to see a
revival of the original King Kong in our local Deco picture palace was a
religious experience. Discovering films of this kind has never lost its magic,
and I have an extensive library of the works of Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, Paul
Naschy and many others. Conventional art house cinema often seems timid by
comparison, though I love the films of Fellini, Ken Russell, and David Lynch,
along with contemporary directors like Peter Strickland and Bertrand Mandico
and many others who sit outside of genres.
Of course, horror contains multiple sub-genres, and for me it is the
gothic, fairy tale aspect that appeals. It’s a world in which the irrational
rules, and imagination has free rein. I have no interest in grimly realistic
portrayals of serial killers. That’s just the daily news, everyday misogyny and
abuse, usually served up with the message that we need trigger-happy rogue cops
to save us all.
I believe you also
have an admiration for HP Lovecraft. Could you tell us more about that?
Last year, I was at the biannual Necronomicon fan
convention in Lovecraft’s home town
of Providence. I found myself at Lovecraft’s graveside explaining to a
couple of strangers how my dad had introduced me to his stories when I was ten,
and how great it had been to encounter a writer even more neurotic than I was.
Telling the story there and then was a strange, emotional moment. I’d never
really put it all together before. I was a very anxious, fearful kid, and HPL
really helped me come to terms with the monsters under my bed. I think it’s
significant that much of Lovecraft’s imagery and plotting came directly out of
his dreams. That gives them a tremendous power.
Of course, as everyone knows, Lovecraft was an awful racist, and
it’s important to face that honestly where it comes out in his writing.
However, I really don’t think his racism is the central point of his work, nor
do I think that’s what draws people to it. For me, it is to do with feeling an
outsider in a largely incomprehensible and indifferent world, where even your
own identity may be in question. All sorts of people can relate to that, and I
think the diversity of an event like Necronomicon tends to bear that out.
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| The fiery angel, 2025 |
What is your
opinion of the situation of contemporary surrealism in general, and of British
surrealism in particular?
I think there are an awful lot of misconceptions about what
surrealism actually is, but despite all that, there are still lots of
surrealists around the world working with the ideas and methods, and developing
them in ways that are interesting. I think the idea of multiple ‘surrealisms’
is useful here. These groups and individuals are not homogeneous and certainly
don’t always agree with each other. For example, surrealism includes both
anarchists and trotskyists, militant atheists and pagan witches and so on.
We seem to be living through a moment in which surrealism and
surrealists are academically respectable, with major retrospective exhibitions
and a lot of books coming out. These phenomena are not in themselves
surrealist, and this will pass, but I’m sure more people will be drawn into
surrealist activities as a result.
In terms of Britain, the Leeds Surrealist group have been active
since the 1990s. Franklin Rosemont put me in touch with the group, I got to
know them and participated in a number of their games and activities. Through
this, I learned a lot about what surrealism is and how it is practised, and
have met many other surrealists. We’ve certainly had our differences, but I
think their surrealist practice is exemplary, and their journals are well worth picking
up.
There is a long running network of surrealists in Wales, documented
in John Richardson’s regular pamphlet ‘Once Upon a Tomorrow/Un
Tro Yfory’ and a couple of lavish
books by Jean Bonnin. More recently, the Surrealerpool group has emerged in
Liverpool and have put out a number of issues of their beautiful magazine ‘Patastrophe. In
Scotland, there is now an Edinburgh feminist surrealist group ‘The Debutante’,
who produce a fine critical and theoretical magazine of that title. Just last
year, a new group in Lancaster produced a fanzine Vile Bird. The line
continues, and beyond these groups there are individual practitioners, writers
and academics too numerous to mention.
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| At the appointed hour, 2025 |
The French poet
Lucien Suel, in an interview, once said something to the effect that was a
direct line from Dadaism through to near-contemporary movements, such as
Situationism, Pop Art, Fluxus and Punk, whereas surrealism was a sort of
deviation. What is your opinion of this?
You can absolutely draw lines between these movements, though I
don’t think it’s a linear progression.
Punk was massively important to me, and I came to the situationists through
that, though ultimately came to feel that what I valued in situationist
writings was already there in the surrealists. I think perhaps the distinction
is that surrealism defined itself in terms of a genealogy running all the way
back to roots in primordial myth, whereas the other tendencies were very much
about the new, and the modern industrial era.
Jeff Keen was a
British film maker, artist and poet who was tremendously influenced by
surrealism, but also by pop and outsider art. He is regarded, quite rightly, as
one of the top counterculture figures from the 1960s-1970s, yet he is still
relatively unknown. What is your opinion of his work?
I’m a huge fan. I first encountered his work on UK TV in the 1980s,
a documentary including a generous selection of clips and complete films. My
recollection is that it was late night, after the pub. I was absolutely
awestruck. The richly layered images of the earlier films, and the futuristic
blasts of animated scribbles and collage that followed. Much of the
experimental film around back then was slow, minimal, mannered, and often more
than a little boring. Keen’s work was nothing like that. A blazing, unstoppable
creative energy. Short, intense glimpses of a world buzzing with imagination,
colour and humour, often very black humour. Imagery from science fiction and
horror, pinups and comics. My kind of stuff. I instantly fell in love with it
all.
Unfortunately, pre-internet, I could find no way to follow up on
this experience, even with access to a university library. I just had a name,
and this incandescent, tantalising memory. It was more than a decade before I
could start to put the pieces together. The massive Jeff Keen BFI box set GAZWRX
in 2000 was a revelation. Looking back, I can see parallels with New York
underground filmmakers like Jack Smith and Ira Cohen who were his
contemporaries, and I believe he was every bit their equal and then some. He
was producing this magical work out of junk harvested from his immediate
environment and working with family and friends. Similar to what was happening
over the Atlantic in that way, but distinctively English, coming out of Keen’s home town of Brighton and the pop
culture of his place and time. In 2023, I was very fortunate to be able to
attend the GAZENTENARY celebration of Keen’s centenary in Brighton, see his
film Mad Love projected, and meet with some of his circle, including his
daughter Stella Star, now the custodian of his archive. I acquired an original
Jeff Keen drawing, which will always have a place of honour in my home. An
inspiration.
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| Translucent capes flap furiously, 2025 |
What is the
contemporary arts scene like in Scotland?
I’m not really a part of it, except as a punter. I didn’t go to art
school, and I don’t have a gallery or an agent. My activities are fairly
solitary. I’ve had work exhibited in Egypt, France and the US, but never in my
own town and always by surrealist groups. Scotland is a small country, but
there seems to be quite a lot going on, particularly in performance. I think
there’s been a sharp increase in activity since the Covid lockdown. People seem
much more keen to get out there and do things!
A couple of us had
a conversation on Facebook a short while back about ‘recognition’ – what
constitutes ‘recognition’ and when an artist is referred to as being
recognised, from whence that ‘recognition’ is coming – and does it have any
validly.
I saw a presentation by the curators of the recent Tate ‘Surrealism
Beyond Borders’ show, which was revealing in terms of how this all works. For
that exhibition, they weren’t able to consider anything that hadn’t been
exhibited before, and had arrived at an effective cut-off date of about 1980.
They were queried about the latter, but didn’t seem to have an answer, though
it is a truism that artists are often only ’recognised’ after they’re dead. One
thinks of predators that can only see things that are moving. Perhaps curators
can only see things after they have stopped.
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| Season of the wild hunt, 2025 |
I think there’s a kind of institutional ecology involving art
dealers and academics and their agendas that would take a team of
anthropologists to analyse properly. In my experience, individual dealers and
academics genuinely love the work that moves them, but that’s not how the
business works and it’s not how the universities work. In practical terms, I
think most people can recognise the marvellous when they see it, and that’s
actually what matters.
Are you working on
any projects at the moment, despite The Cabinet of Major Weir?
I have vague intentions of putting out book of my work, but when it
comes down to it, creating new collages always seems more appealing than
wrestling with self publishing!
I’m part of La Sirena, an international group of surrealists who
have been meeting online since lockdown to play surrealist games, documented on
our website.
We’ve participated in surrealist events in Cairo, Alabama and at the Maison
Breton in Saint Cirque LaPopie and have a few more projects in development. I
find travelling to meet and collaborate with surrealists in other parts of the
world incredibly rewarding. If anyone out there has an event or a show, I’d
love to visit – just get in touch. Surrealism is international or it is
nothing.
Apart from that, I’m part of SPG One, a ‘post-punk space rock’ combo
playing local pubs and venues. As vocalist, I have been described as providing ‘b-movie incantations’, something that pleased me very much!
Some exhibitions in
which Doug Campbell’s work has appeared
Revelación profana, Fundación Eugenio Granell, Santiago de
Compostela, Spain, 2005
The Archaeology of
Hope, Shanklin, Isle of Wight,
UK, 2017
Surrealism in the
Suburbs of Lisbon, Via Aurea
Art Gallery, Quinto du Conde, Portugal, 2017
Little Shop of
Magic II, The Potteries,
Stoke, UK, 2018
International
Exhibition of Surrealism,
Cairo, Egypt, 2022
Fresh Dirt ‒ Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism, Birmingham, USA 2024
Echoes Surrealistes Contemporains, Maison Andre Breton, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France, 2024
This interview originally appeared in The Odd Magazine.
