Artist statement
Suzanne Smith is an interdisciplinary fine artist currently based in Manchester, UK.
Watchful, insistent and awkwardly intimate, Smith gathers, prods and probes her way through a suspect world. Navigating a fog of social norms it's the junctures that appeal. The tessellation and the slippage. The tiny shifts in gesture, context, location, language, that tip one thing into another - appropriate to inappropriate, contrary to political, irritation to arousal. Taxonomy, typology, classification. Systems both appeal and grate; everything is better when it's sorted. Gathering becomes a recurrent theme, tracking the narrative journey of accumulation from whimsy, to evidence, to prostration. As gloomy as it is playful, Smith's bricolage teeters between mismanaged exorcisms and compulsive accumulations of proof.
Qualifications and training
- 2012 PGCE Art & Design, Institute of Education, Manchester
- 2008 MA Cultural Theory, Lancaster University, Lancaster
- 2007 BA Fine Art, Manchester School of Art, Manchester
Solo exhibitions
- 2007 Sometimes You Can Tell & You Tense & Lo & Behold They Do, Greenroom, Manchester
- 2006 Fear of Small Things, Lowry Project Space, Salford
Group exhibitions
- 2012 Dysfunctional Holiday Party, Squeaky Wheel, Buffalo, New York
- 2012 Paper #3, Paper Gallery, Manchester
- 2011 The Burlington Fine Arts Club, The Burlington Fine Arts Club, Manchester
- 2011 We Are All In This Together, Bureau, Manchester
- 2009 Trade City, Contemporary Art Manchester, New Islington, Manchester
- 2008 Practical Propagation, Vrits, Basel
- 2008 Line Out: Leicester Short Film Festival, The Phoenix Arts Centre, Leicester
- 2008 Closer, Wolstenholme Projects, Liverpool
- 2008 Spook Up I Can't Hear You, The Embassy, Edinburgh
Curated projects
- 2011 Frankophilia!, The Chapman Gallery, University of Salford
- 2011 Haiti Artists Art Auction, CUBE, Manchester
Intervention
- 2009 Dispersal: Interventions Part 1, Various sites, Birmingham, Lincoln, Manchester
- 2008 5th Edinburgh Annuale, The Embassy, Edinburgh
- 2007 Inbetween Spaces, Look07 Photography Festival, Billboard, Manchester
Competitions, prizes and awards
- 2008 Postgraduate Scholarship, Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK
Publications
- 2012 Hand to Mouth, The Poor Press, London
Personal website
