TateShots: Turner Prize 2014, Duncan Campbell

Turner Prize nominee Duncan Campbell discusses understanding certain histories through objects and his filmmaking process in this film shot in his studio and the Glasgow School of Art.

“I’m attracted by certain histories or certain stories”, says artist Duncan Campbell on his work It for Others. For this work, Campbell took inspiration from the 1953 visual essay Les Statues Meruent Assui (Statues Also Die) by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais about traditional West African art and colonialism’s effect on how we perceive culture. Nominated for his contribution to Scotland’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Campbell’s film comprises of four chapters - one features a performance by the Michael Clark Company and another images related to the Official IRA volunteer Joseph McCann. Speaking on the process of looking through large amounts of archival material, Campbell says “you become aware that this isn’t some kind transparent window onto reality …histories are very important, but I think it’s very important to look at how those histories are constructed as well’.