Artist ready to represent Scotland at Venice Biennale

But, when we meet, the quietly-spoken film-maker is still working his way around the inspiration for his work, searching, investigating and improvising on the themes suggested by a film which is acting as his muse. This muse is a controversial essay movie made by Alain Resnais and Chris Marker in 1953, entitled Les Statues Meurent Aussi, or Statues Also Die, which investigates historic African art and how it was plundered and its use distorted by years of colonialism. The film was commissioned by a journal, Présence Africaine.

Campbell, who has grown his reputation with work that blends archival material, documentary and his own, fictional or imaginary images, says the film "gets him in the gut". His previous work has been described as "slippery biopics", but this work seems to be wider in its subject matter. In Venice, he will include Statues Also Die alongside his own new work, which will include filmed footage, archival work, and even some animation in a "social and historical examination of cultural imperialism and commodity".

He says: "You could say it is about African art, but maybe the term 'art' doesn't quite get it. There are masks and statues, art and ceremonial objects. And the premise of the film is that is it looks at the objects and, I guess, is a statement that the original purpose of the objects has been lost, mainly because of colonialism, and that a lot of them came with an oral tradition that has been lost. It is a very interesting film, because it is very much focused on the objects. And then there is this reveal towards the end – and it was made in 1953 so France was still a colonial power in west Africa – and it links the consumption of these objects with the death of their original purpose. It becomes very polemic: it is anti-racist and anti-colonial."

Campbell is entranced by the film. "It was ahead of its time, and it was banned as a result. Amazingly now, it still gets you in the gut. There is something still very vital about it now. Some of the themes, to do with memory in particular, they are all there, there is a kind of poetry about it." In response, Campbell will look at the issues of memory and time, as well as the history of Présence Africaine. "That is the context that I am looking at, and looking at how arguments evolved."

He adds: "At that stage the main thrust of the journal was ideas of 'Negritude' and returning to some kind of black consciousness and difference. The magazine was run from the 1950s to the late 1980s and a new generation came through and unpicked what had come before. There was space in the magazine to do this, so that is what I am looking at. There is also a section where I am looking at similar objects and expanding it historically, but that is the focus. It can be very sprawling so I have to keep that focus."

Campbell's new work, he says, is being made in roughly the same way he made previous works, notably Bernadette from 2008, about Irish dissident and political activist Bernadette Devlin and 2009's Make It New John, about the famous metallic gull-winged DeLorean car made, temporarily, in Northern Ireland. They both featured original footage from the 1980s with re-enactments and documentary-style interviews. I ask whether the research required for his works could be compared to a university dissertation. Campbell, who studied the MFA at the Glasgow School of Art and has a BA in Fine Art from the University of Ulster, says: "It isn't as structured as a essay, it is a little bit more intuitive. I would say it is more of an improvisation, that is a better way of putting it. For example, when I first had a budget to use archival material about Bernadette Devlin, I had everything there was to read about her. Then I found, that the material I thought I wanted, that would be interesting, weren't necessarily the most interesting. I wondered whether I could be looser with the parameters I set." He adds: "I turned it on its head, going on the basis of the material, and that's loosely been my approach since then. Generally, I start looking at one thing, then lots of things happen. So the film I am working on for Venice is still evolving. Saying what it is about at the moment? It is difficult."

Campbell, born in 1972 in Dublin, grew up in the Swords, now works in a studio at the Briggait in central Glasgow. He also spends a lot of time in the Mitchell Library, researching written materials.

He has thought about moving away from Glasgow before, but always stayed. "It's just a very good place to make work. There's enough going on in terms of the art scene, the music scene. In London and New York there is quite a competitive social thing. Here it is social but I find it quite a good place to be getting on with what I need to be getting on with, and the economics of it work."

This year's Scotland + Venice presentation will be the sixth and marks the 10th anniversary for the project, with the first exhibition in 2003, which showed the work of Claire Barclay, Jim Lambie and Simon Starling. The Palazzo Pisani, unlike some Venetian venues, is not overwhelming in its size and scale. You could even be in someone's (albeit large) apartment. Campbell says: "Yes, there is something domestic about it, you are not competing with the architecture. The space has a logic to it, especially once we worked out what we were doing – Hayley needs certain requirements for light, which I don't, and Corin needs a bit of both, but once you have broken it down it was simple to work it out."

On the prospect of representing an entire country, or at least, a country's art scene, Campbell is sanguine. He says: "It's a fantastic opportunity. There are aspects of it which make you think - [the Biennale] is very big. But I am very happy and grateful for the opportunity. I do have the experience of feeling daunted and overwhelmed by the size of it. It's not to say that they are all incomprehensible, but the idea that there has to be some kind of overall comprehension in its entirety, that doesn't work for me."

Campbell adds, before heading back to work: "As far as representing Scotland: I have lived here for 16 years. In terms of what I can do, the Scotland context is more real to me than representing Ireland."

Scotland + Venice 2013, 1 June 2013 – 24 November 2013 Palazzo Pisani, Venice.