The Exquisite Pirate (Oceania), 2008

The Exquisite Pirate is an ongoing body of work, begun in 2004.
It has been recently exhibited as wall installations of varying dimensions and is made primarily from felt, canvas and everyday fabrics. It was installed as a large-scale assemblage in 2006 at Postmasters Gallery, New York, NY; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, in the exhibition 2006 Contemporary Commonwealth ; Dangerous Waters, Herbert F.Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; El Pirata Esquisito, Jacob Karpio Galeria, San Jose, Costa Rica; in 2007 in New History at The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, The Hunter College, New York and 24hrArt Darwin Contemporary Art Space.

The Exquisite Pirate work has developed from a long-term interest in representations of feminine identity with reference to contemporary and historical models. It also brings forth the woman pirate as a metaphor for contemporary global issues of personal and social identity, cultural instability, immigration and hybridity, and reflects on the symbolism of the ship and its relevance to postcolonial discourse and, specifically, its relevance to contemporary and historical Australia. My work places a practical and theoretical emphasis on the installation space, on mutable forms and methodologies of deconstruction and reconstruction. My use of materials is integral to the conceptual unfolding of my work: the process of cutting, collage, photo-montage, staining, sewing and stitching – and their association with women’s practices – are refined and reassessed in the context of each installation.

The Exquisite Pirate develops my ideas about the woman pirate as a metaphor for personal and social identity, cultural hybridity and immigration. The project initiated from a simple question – “were there any women pirates?” Parallel to this was the seemingly huge growth in popular culture imagery connected to pirates and continuous reference of the word itself in the media as relating to cyberspace activities. In contemporary and historical Australia the boat and ship have loomed large around immigration issues and for me have become expressive, powerful images for postcolonial discourses.
Of my research on women pirates, it is Kathy Acker’s book Pussy King of Pirates that resonates through The Exquisite Pirate. Acker uses the metaphor of female pirates to explore feminine issues and sexuality, at the same time subverting the historic perception of piracy as a male domain. Without glorifying the lawlessness of the historical woman pirate, my work proposes a figure of indeterminate identity as a way of thinking about a globalised world and the need for alternative opinions.

Sally Smart, Decoy Nest

Named after the decoy nests made by birds to keep their predators at bay, Sally Smart’s Decoy Nest represents an alternate strategy – part of a complex scheme that keeps us guessing and continually exceeds our grasp. Smart forages in the undergrowth of cultural memory, and gathers up fragments from which to build her elaborate assemblages. Elements of fabric and photographs of bodies and trees are cut and layered to comprise this large-scale construction. Variously textured bark photographic elements overlap to form a sturdy tree trunk which sprouts branches that are entangled with ambiguous and evocative forms.

The bed that sits in the treetop alludes to the home as nest. From a nearby tree hang a pair of human limbs as disembodied outstretched fingers and hands simultaneously extend the tree’s reach. These oscillating patterns of life, loss, growth, decay, extension and retreat mirror the larger movement both towards and away from tangible meaning that characterises Smart’s practice. Above this conceptual snare is perched a giant dense black nest.

Decoy Nest is a development of Smart’s earlier work, Family Tree House (2000-2005), which invoked the family tree, the tree house and the tree of life through paradoxical arrangements of homely and unhomely imagery. The blues, blacks and greys of Decoy Nest set a much more ominous tone. Coupled with the tree’s bare branches, this dark palette encourages us to question whether this tree is really dead and merely a host to the activity, or is a deciduous tree in the stasis of winter and a living partner to other cycles of life, death and renewal. Decoy Nest consequently stands as a potent metaphor for our contemporary moment in which we are being forced to reconsider our past and future relationships to a planet in the grip of global warming and environmental degradation.

The fine straight lines that establish more explicit points of connection between the different elements in Decoy Nest recall practices of map-making and the linear structure of a family tree. However, unlike the cartographer and genealogist, Smart seeks ultimately to unsettle our expectations for structure and transparency in order to open up new spaces for imagination and intervention. The white gallery wall on which the work is pinned thereby transforms into a psychological space in which countless associations are layered, entwined and dispersed.

In Smart’s practice, photographic elements and silhouetted forms are fractured and hybridised to heighten their symbolic potential. Moreover, by emphasising the pins and joins that connect each of her formal components, Smart makes visible the highly physical and performative processes of collecting, cutting, reconstructing and pinning through which her work is produced. This performative quality is reiterated by the figure that appears towards the top of Decoy Nest, a photograph of Smart herself. Layers of practice, material and metaphor overlap and double back in this nest, as Smart’s practice of pinning forms a decoy whose meaning cannot ultimately be pinned down.

Dr Melissa Miles
Lecturer in Theory of Art & Design at the Faculty of Art Design, Monash University, Australia.

Painting in the Dark by Felicity Fenner, 2004

The forms and figures that occupy Sally Smart's recent paintings are informed by art historical and personal stories, imbued with aspects of feminism and psychoanalysis. As such, a surrealist element pervades Smart's imagery, articulated by shadowy human and natural motifs that hover on nebulous backgrounds rendered in shades of dark. Yet these are not passive dream-like works: they are confronting both in their raw and visceral fabrication, and in their intensely intimate portrayal of mnemonic and melancholic psychological states.

There is an uncanny sense of inhabitation in these works – a sense of being inextricably bound into intimate stories and complex environments that intersect physically and psychologically in our individual and collective memories. Unexpected shifts in scale and depth disarm the unsuspecting viewer. In comparison to the diminutive scale of some of the artist's art historical sources, including Cubism and Surrealism, Smart's paintings are huge. Their scale, narrative disquiet and prevailing blackness are engulfing.

The artist’s and indeed the viewers' physical relationship to these theatrical and evocative vignettes is ambiguous: are we inside looking out? Or outside looking in? As if unwittingly dragged into a stage performance without knowing the actors’ roles, we struggle to maintain a conventionally objective viewpoint from beyond the picture's surface. This lack of distinction between inner and outer realities is an extension of the performative process inherent to the making of these paintings: drawing on a repertoire of collage images made from felt, fabric and photographic elements - which here include spider webs, insect wings, women's skirts and disembodied legs with shoes carefully laced - Smart's canvas is a malleable entity, ever-shifting in response to the artist’s intuitive movements through and around the picture plane. Nothing here is pinned down until many options have been explored.

This co-existence of finite and abstract elements, of the real and imagined, is as seductive as it is disorientating. We are like Alice in Wonderland, drawn into an unpredictable and occasionally threatening dreamscape of symbolically-laden narratives. Or is Alice in fact the protagonist, submerged by the oversized insect wings that she's sprouted, or entangled in the branches of Goya's deathly tree from the Disasters of War? If there is an autobiographical element to these works, it embraces the experience not only of the artist, but of an audience engaged in philosophical, postcolonial and environmental discourses.

The tree of life is an ancient theme in many cultural contexts; the family tree is similarly central to humanity's perception of self. It is not coincidental, given the current world situation, that Goya's famous series is invoked here, nor is the tree devoid of local political symbolism, particularly given Smart's rural Australian background and interest in the iconic value of the native gum tree.

Painting in the Dark is a multi-layered series of work in many ways. Besides the physical layering of Smart's collage process, the phraseology of the title suggests a searching into the mind and imagination. Then there is the recurrent use of silhouette forms, which not only bring a historic and spectral character to the paintings, but which in their indeterminate features reveal the vagaries and hidden depths of human existence.
Felicity Fenner, 2004

[versión en español]
Pintando en la oscuridad

Las formas y figuras que ocupan la pintura reciente de Sally Smart están basadas en la Historia del arte y en historias personales, repletas de aspectos acerca del feminismo y el psicoanálisis. Como tal, un elemento surrealista impregna la imaginería de Smart, articulada por sombríos motivos humanos o naturales que flotan sobre fondos nebulosos reproducidos en tonalidades oscuras. Sin embargo, éstas no son obras pasivas, ensueños, y se enfrentan en su invención cruda y visceral, y en su intensa e íntima representación de mnemotécnicos y melancólicos estados psicológicos.

Hay una extraordinaria sensación de ausencia en estas obras – una sensación de estar inextricablemente confinado en historias íntimas y complejos ambientes que se interceptan física y psicológicamente en nuestra memoria individual y colectiva. Inesperados cambios de escala y profundidad desarman al confiado espectador. En comparación con la diminutiva escala de algunas de las fuentes artístico-históricas de la artista -incluyendo el Cubismo y el Surrealismo-, las pinturas de Smart son enormes. Su inquietante escala narrativa y prevaleciente oscuridad son sobrecogedoras.

La relación psíquica del artista y, por supuesto, del espectador ante estas viñetas teatrales y evocadoras es ambigua: ¿estamos dentro mirando hacia afuera? ¿o fuera mirando hacia adentro? Como si con nulo entendimiento fuéramos arrastrados hacia un escenario sin conocer el rol de cada actor, nos esforzamos en mantener un punto de vista objetivo, convencional, desde mas allá de la superficie de la pintura. Esta falta de distinción entre realidades internas o externas es una extensión del proceso preformativo inherente a la construcción de estas pinturas: dibujos en un repertorio de imágenes de collage hechas de fieltro, tejidos y elementos fotográficos – el cual aquí incluye telas de araña, alas de insectos, faldas de mujer y misteriosas piernas con zapatos cuidadosamente enlazados. El lienzo de Smart es una entidad maleable, eternamente cambiante en respuesta a los movimientos intuitivos de la artista a través y en torno al plano de la imagen. Nada queda aquí fijado hasta que muchas opciones no han sido exploradas.

Esta coexistencia de elementos finos y abstractos, de lo real y lo imaginado, es tan seductora como desorientadora. Somos transportados, como Alicia en el País de las Maravillas, a un impredecible y ocasionalmente amenazador escenario de ensueño de narrativas cargadas de simbolismos. ¿O es acaso Alicia la protagonista, inundada por las sobredimensionadas alas de insecto que de ella han brotado o enredada en las ramas del mortal árbol de los Desastres de la Guerra de Goya? Si existe un elemento narrativo en estas obras, éste abarca no sólo las experiencias de la artista, pero también las de una audiencia comprometida con discursos filosóficos, postcoloniales y medioambientales.

El árbol de la vida es un tema ancestral en muchos contextos culturales; el árbol de familia es analógicamente central a la propia percepción humana. No es coincidencia, dada la situación del mundo actual, que se haya invocado aquí esta famosa serie de Goya, tampoco lo es el árbol desprovisto de simbolismos políticos locales, particularmente dados los antecedentes rurales australianos de Smart y su interés por el valor icónico de los árboles de resina autóctonos.

Pintando en la oscuridad es una serie de obras que, en diferentes sentidos, está dotada de múltiples capas. Además de la propagación psíquica del proceso de collage de Smart, el título sugiere una búsqueda en la mente y la imaginación. Luego hay un uso recurrente de siluetas, que no sólo aportan personajes espectrales e históricos a las pinturas, sino que en sus rasgos indeterminados revelan lo inestable y lo más hondo y escondido de la existencia humana.

Felicity Fenner, 2004

A Week of Kindness by Felicity Fenner, 2004

One man searching the pages of Whiteley's general catalogue will find only facts and prices; another will find... a deeply moving human drama. 1

British satirists E.V. Lucas' and George Morris' witty collages made from department store catalogues were some of the earliest Dada spoofs on the foibles of humanity in a modern world. Sally Smart's 'deeply moving human drama' is explored by merging reference to the past with contemporary theoretical and artistic concepts. Her 'relief' paintings are informed by a feminist interest in deconstructing notions of the self and a passion for the process of art-making, with all its unpredictable outcomes, accidental marks and sublime moments of creative expression.

The exhibition's title, A Week of Kindness, reveals Smart's debt to Max Ernst's book of the same title (Une Semaine De Bonte, 1934), which has inspired aspects of her practice for many years. Ernst's sources were historical, based on the florid and sentimental wood-engravings that illustrated Victorian popular fiction. Just as Ernst, unlike his contemporaries, derived visual material from the popular culture of a generation before him, Smart too looks back to an earlier time; her paintings evoke Constructivist art, Dada and Surrealism, references to childhood activities such as dressmaking and collage fuelling dreams and imagination.

It is worth noting also the strong conceptual link between Sally Smart and Hannah Hoch, in particular the latter's collages from the 1920s and 30s and costume designs for the Anti-Revue (1924-25). These feature wooden doll-like figures with heads constructed from architectural and mechanical elements, and are re-invented in other aspects of Smart's recent practice. Though Smart assembles her Week of Kindness protagonists in homemade 'costumes', loosely attaching them as if onto the cardboard dolls of Victorian times onto which different outfits could be pinned, she is actually (conversely) exposing them for the world to see: fragmented bodily organs, skeletons, hair and ominous Ernst-like insect forms are perched precariously, somehow retaining a relatively coherent outward form. In these paintings Smart delves deep into the human psyche, revealing its passions and phobias, her remarkable insight reminiscent of Hannah Hoch's claim that 'I perceive physiologically - I smell - the proximity or - how shall I put it? - the innermost being, the entrails of every soul'. 2

Where Hoch eliminated signs of author's presence, deleting traces of touch in the art-making process, Smart casts her collaged appropriations within her characteristic handmade mould. Made from fabric, felt and other mixed media, these paintings are deliberately somatic and redolent of visceral presence in their material tactility. This quality is inherently linked to the artist's interest in the role of the feminine in art practice: 'Although painting is the most esteemed of patriarchal art practices, Smart's deconstructive methods, her dismantling of illusionism, and her emphasis on the processes of construction through cutting and sewing cloth, highlight her revival of women's art practices and her role as the agent of her own meanings. Most importantly they highlight her role as a performer, for everywhere... there are marks, stains and traces to indicate the artist's bodily presence'. 3

Smart's work is also distinguished from its artistic precedents by scale. Surrealist collages turn viewers into voyeurs, the typically diminutive size demanding close proximity and detailed inspection. Smart's paintings are, in contrast, scaled to larger, more contemporary, almost human dimensions. Looking at these images mimics the experience of looking at oneself in a mirror. Theme park mirrors come to mind, each one reflecting a different version of the outer self, depending on the clothing and physiological idiosyncrasies of the presenting character. Another aspect of this work that locates it within the contemporary sphere is its comment on the manipulative and insidious magazine culture in which we live: just as theme park mirrors offer a choice of self-image, one's identity can be redefined by flicking through lifestyle and fashion magazines, collaging elements together in a merging of inner desire with outward necessity.

It is this osmotic ambivalence between interior and exterior, which Hannah Hoch referred to as the blurring of the boundaries in which we live, that captures the imagination of Sally Smart and accounts for the uncanny and dream-like quality of these works. Somehow, we feel, something's not quite right... they have an uneven, homespun rawness that is disturbing in its irreverence, though while her approach might sometimes seem cynical, it is born of familiarity, even love. These spectral silhouettes, with their exposed physiological quirks and imposed handmade fashions, are solitary souls, trapped between the inner and outer worlds of fear and desire, symbols of the 'deeply moving human drama' in which we all inevitably participate.

Felicity Fenner

1 E.V. Lucas and George Morris, What a Life! (1911), with introduction by John Ashberry, Dover Publications, New York, 1975
2 Hannah Hoch in Adriani Gotz, Hannah Hoch 1889-1978 Collages, Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Stuttgart, 1985, p. 14
3 Helen McDonald, Sally Smart, essay on The Unhomely Body series, in Sally Smart: Femmage, Shadows and Symptoms, Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan, 1996, p. 14