Artist Biography

Kate Smith’s paintings lay bare the conventions of the medium and attend to its limitations. Wry, witty yet critically perceptive, her works are active sites of negotiation in which opposing elements defiantly co-exist. Confident brushstrokes collide with hesitant gestures to fluidly recall references from popular culture, art history, and personal anecdotes, each with latent resonance in both artwork and title. Liberally punctuating her work with an idiosyncratic array of motifs stretching from the banal to the peculiar, the artist liberates subjects from their conventional meaning and embraces the freedom of plenitude to undermine the strictures of the painting tradition.

As explicitly tangible objects, Smith’s work frequently calls attention to an artwork’s objecthood with implications on the picture plane and spatial composition. Whether through the irregular wedging of a canvas, the braiding of a frame, floor-level installation or the incorporation of obscure relief elements, this subversive approach negotiates the painting’s predetermined set of objectives to explore plurality and flux. For Smith, the process of painting is one of constant re-evaluation.

Kate Smith (b. 1980, Cootamundra, NSW) lives and works in Wagga Wagga, NSW. Since her graduation from the Australian National University School of Art, Canberra in 2005, Smith’s work has been exhibited frequently across galleries, institutions and artist-run spaces throughout Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Smith has participated in several important surveys of contemporary art in Australia within institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne and Murray Art Museum Albury, Albury. She has been the recipient of awarded residencies within institutions including Artspace, Sydney; Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne and Canberra Contemporary. Examples of her work are included in significant public and private collections across Australia.