CARDS
My latest project features hand-made letterpress pieces, each accompanied by a stack of business-card-sized works, which are free for the visitor to my show to take home with them. I could go into detail about the process, but as I’ve spent all week making these things, I don’t think I could face re-living it, fun though it was. Suffice to say that a lot of paper-chopping, letter-selecting, correcting, ink-rolling, paper-soaking, printing, adjustment-making and hand-cleaning was involved in the process. Here is a short blurb I have written for the exhibition leaflet.
Trevor H Smith
Visitors are invited to take a card from any or all stacks.
Trevor H Smith uses art to explore his interest in a range of cultural phenomena, through which he seeks to express a philosophy, thought or narrative concept. Cards is a series, available in unlimited editions, which sets out to establish that, beyond the artist’s initial intention, there is no set meaning in a work. Cards embraces the fact that the work’s true meaning is determined by its receiver, or in this instance, taker. By omitting all contact information these pieces undermine the traditional purpose of their business-card format, allowing them to exist entirely as art-items.
“In the first instance, my work is an expression of an ethos, or a question, arising from my own experience, after that, it belongs to everyone. I am drawn to the possibility that, once put out there, so to speak, these works live on, after the exhibition, in the wallets, purses and minds of the people that have taken them, where they will gather myriad new meanings, whenever they are reconsidered, passed on, or thrown away by their new owners.”
