MARTIN SMITH

In response to conversations with a therapist as a narrative device

Smith’s mechanism for production is quite methodical – even ritualistic. Carefully layering printed text over the chosen image and meticulously cutting into the surface of both layers facilitates the amazingly professional quality of each finished work. As Smith cuts into the photograph he is exercising a societal taboo; destroying printed images that, for some, can be the only visual by-product of life lived, whose value is all more tangible when that life has expired.

When exhibited, these works have a certain fragile aesthetic.

This combined with intimate and sensitive narratives implore the viewer’s full and careful attention, mirroring the value of a photograph as an honoured social artefact more so than a direct account of history. A precious facsimile of the mind’s eye.

Smith’s works on paper meld the visual and narrative, instantly provoking the viewer to find a link between remembering an image and its associations within their own written or spoken experience.

In a move toward three-dimensionality, Smith has swept up the fallen letters from his wall works and given them new birth as a generally familiar artefact of youth. ‘In response to conversations with a therapist as a narrative device’ is covered fully in the discarded letters of the wall works, and portrays the same tattered surface quality of that of a well-loved toy, conjuring up childhood narratives from the familiar confidant to the discarded and redundant.

‘Are you waiting for the darkness daddy’ highlights the same threads of significance of material possessions, which are all inevitably imprinted with memory and lived experience; recording on its surface ideas of worth and use within the owner’s life. The title however could be conveyed in either ominous or naïve ways, leaving the viewer the ability to formulate diverse meaning from the work.

April 23 – May 10, 2008

ryan renshaw gallery