Philip Leonard Ocampo:
Seethe Hiss Rumble

October - December 2022

Philip Leonard Ocampo (b.1995) is an artist and arts facilitator based in Tkaronto, Canada. Ocampo's multidisciplinary practice involves painting, sculpture, writing and curatorial projects. Exploring worldbuilding, radical hope and speculative futures, campo's work embodies a curious cross between magic wonder and the nostalgic imaginary. Following the tangents, histories and canons of popular culture, Ocampo is interested in how unearthing cultural zeitgeists of past / current times may therefore serve as catalysts for broader conversations about lived experiences; personal, collective, diasporic, etc.

_{Documentation courtesy of Alison Postma}

Seethe Hiss Rumble reinterprets the figure of the “guardian beast” in folklore and mythology: Hades’ three-headed canine and keeper of the gates of the Underworld -the Cerberus- specifically. Transforming the plumb bar into a site of protection, this project expands upon the bar as the first mediating structure a visitor encounters before entering the gallery's two underground exhibitions spaces. By invoking the spirit of the creature and their watchful gaze, Ocampo has sown a spell of safekeeping for the artworks after-hours; mirroring the plumb's actual security measures for each room.

Ocampo is interested in the elusive entities in folklore and horror cinema such as the Loch Ness Monster or the Blair Witch. Seeking to embodying this mystery, Seethe Hiss Rumble alludes to the beast through illustrating a distorted accumulation of the hellhound's defining features, multiplied by three:
- Six eyes molten, reptilian, feigning, mitosis, and metallic (a coin used to pass through the river Styx)
- A trio of fire breathing serpents for a tail
- A line of fangs, eager
- Twelve legs sprinting in unison

Working within the practice of combining the mythological and the nostalgic, Seethe Hiss Rumble references the flat, graphic qualities of both ancient tapestries and the side scroll of retro video games. Together, this work presents a stylized retelling of a primordial battle.