Ruby Campbell Honoured in Major Retrospective
Central Queensland is home to many stories of quiet resolve, success against the odds and hidden, often uncelebrated, talent. Since its inception in 2013, the Banana Shire Regional Art Gallery has been working to conserve these stories in collaboration with the local community. In the major retrospective exhibition, Ruby Campbell, Daughter of the Callide Valley, the remarkable life, and artistic career of one of the Banana Shire’s best kept secrets, Ruby Campbell, is fully revealed.
Drawing from collections of Kilburnie Homestead, Banana Shire Historical Society’s Greycliffe Homestead, and the considerable number of Ruby Campbell works donated to the Banana Shire Council, the exhibition is an exercise in weaving fraying threads of local history. The collaboration between local knowledge holders such as Len Neale and Fiona Hayward and the combination of these long-separated collections, has led to the display of new discoveries about Campbell’s life and the timeline of her career, previously forgotten.
Curator Bridie Weaver notes that, “by viewing so many of Campbell’s works in one space, we start to notice the connections between them. How she consistently drew aspects of her home of ‘Kilburnie’ throughout her entire career, and how her family history can be traced through her portraits and changing subject matter”.
“There are many works that gain new meaning when informed by other pieces from separate collections. She was so prolific, and her works are now spread far throughout Central Queensland. It is exciting to bring them together.”
Juggling the duties of life of an isolated cattle property, and her passion for art, Campbell’s story is coloured by determination. Ruby was born in 1888 with her twin sister Beryl, to Scottish parents newly arrived in the Callide Valley. In the same year the family’s tutor, Irish artist Walter Pasley passed away at the Campbell’s Kilburnie Homestead, 80 km west of Gladstone. As Ruby Campbell grew up, she was intrigued by the drawings and watercolours that were left by the artist and began her own Pasley-informed self-taught practice. These precise and illustrative works now hang side by side in Ruby Campbell, Daughter of the Callide Valley.
With limited transportation and correspondence, Campbell made art with what was at hand. The exhibition includes delicately carved and pyrographed furniture, made from wooden packing crates and fine watercolours gummed to rough timber drawing boards. In 1918 Campbell began a commercial illustration course by correspondence with the Battle Creek School of Applied Arts, Michigan, USA, developing a fine lined based style which later translated into her etching practice.
Despite her isolation she was a committed patron of Queensland fine arts, with particular interest in collecting work by artist Lionel Linsey and Vida Lahey. Campbell was foundational in establishing the Rockhampton and Banana Shire Regional Art Galleries, both of which now possess her works in their collections. All this she achieved while managing the Kilburnie Homestead, an unusual role for an unmarried woman at the time.
Ruby Campbell, Daughter of the Callide Valley, lays out Campbell’s story through her artworks and objects and letters. It is riddled with uncertainty, as are many projects which depend upon disappearing pools of knowledge. However, the skill evident in her works and the tenacity apparent in her life story speak volumes.
Written by Len Neale and Bridie Weaver
