Co-presented with Metro Tunnel Creative Program
13 January – 1 March 2022
Jon Campbell
Your best is good enough for me 2021
vinyl print on construction hoarding, City Square, Melbourne
240.0 x 4,310.0 cm
Commissioned in association with Metro Tunnel Creative Program
Courtesy of the artist and Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney
Offsite
Metro Tunnel hoarding, City Square
Swanston Street, Melbourne VIC 3000
Jon Campbell is well known for his long standing engagement with the vernacular language of popular culture, pop music and suburbia, which the artist transforms into visually engaging text-based paintings, collages and sculptural assemblages. As the artist notes, ‘snippets of conversation, argument and dialogue are transformed using the conventions of formal abstraction and graphic design to both confuse the original function of the words and phrases and elevate them to a pictorial object.’
Your best is good enough for me 2021 is a new panoramically scaled work specifically commissioned for the forty-three-metre-long hoarding which currently extends along the Swanston Street frontage of Melbourne’s City Square. Remembered from a conversation with a friend, the text seeks out a connection between people and encourages dialogue and trust. The seven words project dynamically into public space, addressing the viewer with a sense of faith or belief in people and their best efforts, no matter how big or small. It projects an affirmative and hopeful – if somewhat melancholy – mood of the moment, with a sense of care, empathy and belief in others.
Your best is good enough for me arguably transcends any specific time or mood, as an enduring sentiment or appeal to the viewer/reader. The affirmative spirit of the text is matched by the dynamic optical play of positive and negative space, and of colour and reflection, in a push-me-pull-you abstraction which requires the active involvement of the viewer to unravel the text – which might also involve reciting the phrase in their head, or passing it on to a friend.
Working designs from this project will also be presented at ACCA, in the Project Space: The Hoarding over the duration of the exhibition.
Access:
Please note that access to City Square on Swanston Street is by footpath or tram only. Tram access is in close proximity on Collins St. The nearest public toilets are located 650m away at 424 Collins St, Melbourne. Please contact ACCA if you have any further queries about access and this event 03 9697 9999 or info@acca.melbourne
