Colin Campbell, born in Reston, Manitoba, received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Manitoba in 1966, and a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California, three years later. Although trained in painting and drawing, Campbell turned to the newly accessible medium of video as early as 1972 when he began teaching in the art department at Acadia University, Sackville, New Brunswick.

As video was a new medium for art, Campbell's early videotapes reflect interests in its unique qualities, exploring the ambiguity inherent in a television image or sound. The "reality" of an image is questioned by overlapping a still photograph of Campbell with a moving video image of himself. The "real" time of the live video performance and the photographic time already recorded are merged in the video image. Or Campbell makes a series of statements and then both denies and asserts them. In the dualities and ambiguities of video, he found a challenge which has sustained him for almost two decades and which has led him to being at the forefront of this new medium in both Canada and trans-nationally.

Campbell's videotapes have been shown extensively in festivals, museums and broadcasts worldwide. His work is in all the major museums which collect video. Some of the appeal lies in his ability to challenge the divisions, set up in other disciplines, like fact/fantasy, male/female, individual/persona. His later videotapes have taken the ambiguity which he originally identified and played with, and have extended it into the social and political realm.

As other artists in the videotapes play different gender roles, Campbell is able to explore the nuances of male and female stereotypes back against themselves. The transvestism refers both to gender roles and to a history of vaudeville which came to television in the guise of Milton Berle, for instance, and is still a staple of Saturday Night Live's Church Lady.

The cross-referencing of gender is a major theme in much postmodern art found in everything from Cindy Sherman's photographs to William Hurt's portrayal in Kiss of the Spiderwoman. This and other qualities of Campbell's interrogative work make him one of the finest examples of the postmodern in visual art in Canada.

Since he first manifested a video alter-ego, Colin Campbell has worked thoroughly and consistently to evolve a fictional genre of importance for art and communication. His independent productions have increasingly explored more complex issues through more developed characterizations and stories. Parody has become humour. Fantasy has become speculative fiction. Performer has become persona. In short, Campbell is creating a new literature for the technoculture.

(Originally published in: Winnipeg Art Gallery Tableau, Nov/Dec. 1990)