I finally got back in the studio today after about 6 weeks! It looked very neat and tidy in there but luckily not so tidy that it was intimidating …
… and I’d left a piece to finish off, which a minor accident with meant I had to play a bit…
I’ve now left myself some started but unfinished work to do when I get back after the Christmas festivities to round of my professional practice development project.
In the meantime, Happy Christmas.
Apart from writing various funding bits and doing other stuff that has kept me at the computer, I am pleased to have work in two shows.
Outside the Lines in Folkestone runs until 28 January at a very nice space called Brew, which happens to be a coffee shop in a beautiful white Modernist building just near Folkestone Central station. Once you know where it is, it is easy to find! Unusually for coffee shop venues, it has a real white cube space feel once you are inside – and the coffee is good too! The exhibition includes four of my recent collage pieces.
I also have some work in the Christmas edition of the Art Market in Maidstone – my Chinese Zodiac inspired pieces, which include two Roosters, as next year is the year of the Rooster, starting 28 January. They look rather good all hung together like this, which is spurring me on to do a set of twelve, once I get out from behind the computer.
Clare Smith's mixed English/Chinese heritage informs her perspective on issues of identity and categorisation. Her nomadic childhood and early adulthood have meant a somewhat ambivalent relationship to place, reinforced by the sense of ambiguity that comes from her mixed identity. Smith works with drawing, print media, collage and moving image to investigate this ambivalence, with references to craft, the importance of labour and the handmade. Through her choice of materials and approaches, she creates work which attempts to create a sense of unity, an interpretation of Homi Bhabha's "Third Space" - seen as a space in which different parts can come together to challenge dominant ideas of wholeness. Collaboration is part of Smith’s practice and she is also co-founder of Dover Arts Development (DAD) together with painter, Joanna Jones. This involves working with many different artists, curation, organisation, event management, creating networks across East Kent and influencing the public realm in Dover. Clare works from a studio in Dover. She has an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and has exhibited nationally and internationally.
