MARTIN SMITH

Martin Smith
Silence of a Falling Star 2006
Photocollage
110 x 110 cm
image credit: http://www.ryanrenshaw.com.au/

Martin Smith
After Sport One Sunday 2006
Lambda print
110 x 110cm
image credit: http://www.martin-smith.net

Martin Smith, born and works in Brisbane, Australia.

Martin Smith works with photographic images and text, painstakingly hand cutting the text from the photographic print, creating a negative space of diary entries, stories and lyrics. The text incorporated into the photographs are central to the artworks, often confessional, filled with memories and nostalgia, incised into the photographic surface. Smith’s use of memories laid bare to the viewer, allow for an audience interpretation, layering multiple personal experiences into the artwork.

The cutting of text and words into the surface of the photographic images gives the artworks a sculptural quality. The photographic image blurs into the text and vice versa, you cannot see one without the other. Smith plays with the instantaneous quality of the photography (the click of the camera) and the meticulous, time consuming quality of the hand cut letters and text to produce artworks that reflect the ups and downs, with melancholy and humor, of growing up and life within the suburbs.

The cut letters are not wasted either, with Smith scattering them on the bottom of frames, or on the floor underneath the artworks, as if they just naturally fell from the image itself, collecting at the bottom, like leaves from a tree.

Photography captures the classic moments of our lives, like your first day at school, a birthday celebration, a holiday, but it doesn’t capture those other parts of your life that, although in that particular moment perhaps seem unimportant, are sometimes much more significant in shaping us as human beings.

– Martin Smith

Each letter is hand cut from the printed photo, so there’s only ever one made … which goes against a lot of the mechanical easily reproducible aspects of photography.

– Martin Smith

What I do is, I have the photograph and then I etch text into the photograph, sometimes that text is a song lyric, and other times it’s a story from my youth or from my adulthood. Then I physically cut each letter out of the photo.

– Martin Smith

‘The storytelling came from when I started looking at my old family photos and thinking about what goes with them. You know when you’re looking at family photos, there are particular stories that go with them – that’s that person, that’s the time when your uncle turned up for Christmas, and so on.

– Martin Smith

Photography captures the classic moments of life, like your first day at school, but it doesn’t capture the other parts of your life that are sometimes way more significant.

– Martin Smith

Martin Smith
After Seeing Every Episode Twice 2006
Lambda print
65.5 x 65.5cm
image credit: http://www.martin-smith.net/

Martin Smith
Ronald Desmond 2004
Type C photograph
37 x 145cm
image credit: http://www.ryanrenshaw.com.au/

CONCEPTUAL FRAME WORK:

ARTIST

Martin Smith, fine artist
studied visual arts at the Queensland College of Art
works in photography and photo-collage

ARTWORK

photographic prints with letters and text cut out of the image
contains stories, lyrics and diary entry style texts
discarded letters cut away from the photographic prints are collected and used as part of the artworks
created through memories and past experiences

AUDIENCE

access own personal memories to familiar scenarios and memories presented by Martin Smith through the texts cut into the artworks
can choose whether to explore the artworks through just the imagery, the text or both

WORLD

memories and experiences of youth and adolescence
suburban experiences and lifestyles
growing up, childhood, middle class memories and stories

Martin Smith
Fix it up 2010
pigment print and collage
90 x 180cm
image credit: http://www.martin-smith.net/

Martin Smith
Every Sunday 2009
pigment print and collage
90 x 130cm
image credit: http://www.sophiegannongallery.com.au/

THE FRAMES:

SUBJECTIVE

feelings associated with the artists memories and the audiences interpretations and own memories layered onto them
various emotions as reactions to happy and sad stories
presents to the viewer a chance to access their own childhood memories

STRUCTURAL

photographic images
letters, words and texts that make up memories and stories personal to the artist
letters cut by hand out of the photographic
relationships between the the instant properties of the photograph and the labor intensive act of hand cutting text

CULTURAL

Australian suburban lifestyle and memories
events from childhood and adolescence
images and landscapes from Queensland

POSTMODERN

appropriation of lyrics as text
humor, irony and memory used in text
child hood events are reinterpreted through both the artist and the viewer
challenges mainstream photographic conventions by cutting into the printed image and removing the text as negative space.

Martin Smith
Amazingly Peaceful and Beautiful 2009
Pigment print on photorag
34 x 50cm
image credit: http://www.ryanrenshaw.com.au/

Martin Smith
Failing 2009
Pigment print on Hahnemuhle miller paper
39 x 40 cm
image credit: http://www.ryanrenshaw.com.au/

PRACTICE:

photographic skills
time involved in the hand cutting of individual letters and text within the artworks
interest in past memories and events throughout lifetimes
ambiguous landscapes resembling sites of memory and particular events
interest in how an audience projects their own feelings, memories and associations with the artworks, layering multiple meanings in each one