'I love how Lee fuses the poetry with the filmmaking, really creative and everyone appreciates him when he comes to PoetryLGBT, he brings something different, he’s been able to use Zoom to enhance his creativity and that’s been amazing to see'
Andreena Leeanne (founder of PoetryLGBT), interviewed by Matt Skallerud, April 2021
Lee's recent moving image work revolves around his personal autobiographical perspective and explores (gay male) identity and desire. Comedy is an integral part of his work. He uses it to engage, disarm, and highlight.
Lee’s experimental performance poetry films have been selected for many international film festivals since 2019 including Queerbee LGBT Film Festival, The Gilbert Baker Film Festival, Kansas 2020 and 2021, HOMOGRAPHY, Brussels and STATES OF DESIRE: Tom of Finland in the Queer Imagination, Casa de Duende, Philadelphia, USA, 2020 WICKED QUEER 2021, Boston, USA, FilmPride - Brighton & Hove Pride's official LGBTQ+ film festival, Brighton, UK, Splice Film Festival 2021, Brooklyn, USA and Darkroom Festival, London.
He has won several awards/nominations for these films including Best Psychedelic Fantasy film winner for 'See Me' (2020), Retro Avant Garde Film Festival NYC 2021, Semi-Finalist at Serbest International Film Festival 2021, Honorable Mention and Semi Finalist winner at Splice Film Festival, New York (2020 and 2021), Nominee for Best Original Concept and Best Atmosphere Independent Horror Movie Awards 2021, Honorable Mention Award, Screener Short Films 2020, Best Kent Film nominee, Margate Bookie Film Festival, 2020 and Special Mention Award, London-Worldwide Comedy Short Film Festival, 2019.
Lee has been interviewed numerously about his current film/performance work including interviews with Tim Kirk, Matt Skallerud for I Love Gay Today/Pink Media LGBT, Hamish Downie’s Five Questions With – Lee Campbell (March 2021) BBC Radio Kent- Interview with Dominic King for The Dominic King Show January 2021. His film work has received critical acclaim with recent review features of his film work by Francesca de Luca in Cut Frame Magazine and James Clark in Lost Creatives.
His live Zoom poetry performances have been showcased this year at events including Disturbance#2, Ugly Duck, London, Theatre Deli, London Festival ECRÃ Edition 5, Rio de Janeiro, and the Immersive Storytelling Symposium, Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham. In October 2021, Lee headlined Forum+ Incite! Lee currently performs regularly at poetry events across London including Poetry Shack, Mind Over Matter, Poetry LGBT, The Word Zoo, Mother Wolf Club and Gob Jaw. He is a regular performer at Paper Tiger Poetry at Tea House Theatre where he recently won Best Poem of the Night (September 2021).
His poem ‘Clever at Seeing without being Seen’ was recorded for Sometimes, The Revolution is Small, Disarm Hate x Poetry project by Nymphs & Thugs Recording Co. UK and recent publications of his poetry include Queerlings: A Literary Magazine for Queer Writing, First Times, Powders Press, Gob Jaw Zine 8, You Are Here - The Journal of Creative Geography and Otherwise magazine.
Lee has a long history of curating performance and fine art exhibitions internationally. For example, between 2005-2008, he curated All for Show, an internationally touring film showreel of emerging and established British moving image artists whose work exposed the banalities of everyday life through humour, self-introspection, and serious play. In 2020, Lee curated Radical Ventriloquism at Kelder, London and presented a compilation of short films by queer male filmmakers entitled Homo Humour in Miami and Italy (Online) with a further screening planned for FRISE, Hamburg, Germany in 2022.Lee runs a regular monthly experimental poetry /spoken word night, POW! Play on Words, at The Bridge House Theatre in South London where he is currently curatorial poet in residence. In January 2021, he curated a set of queer poetry evenings for BBC Radio.
Lee trained in Fine Art Painting at Winchester School of Art (1996-2000) and Slade School of Fine Art (2005-2007) where he received his MFA and then received his doctorate in 2016 from Loughborough University. He was part of the artist studio programme Conditions between 2018-2020 and has undertaken artist residencies at The Banff Centre, Canada 2012, Spazju Kreattiv, Malta 2019 and Theatre Deli, London in 2021.