The Municipal Gardens was an exhibition that took place at the Waiting Room, Tāmaki, October 2024. Curated by Bronwyn Lloyd this small exhibition coincided with the launch of Jack Ross’s “Haunts”. Jack Ross is the author of six poetry collections, four novels, and four books of […]
Emma Smith, First light, 2022, Oil on canvas, 300x 250mm In A.D 1552, on May the 17th such a terrible storm with hail descended on Dordrecht in Holland, that the people thought the Day of Judgement was coming. And it lasted half an hour. Several […]
Dazzle camouflage, distorts and censors events as they mechanically unfold. Large craggy constructions are propped by rickety stakes, strange militaristic shapes shoot by, pipes and planks are raised and swivel in a magnetic impasse, explosions momentarily hold their breath; all forms charting the looming certainty […]
A smuggler’s trade, your skins and fat for my marching armies fuses imagined sites and actual places with notions of success and failure, un/healthy competition, survival. In the cool night light, strange walls of foliage become barriers, confidence courses appear militaristic and unsafe, golf flags testify to […]
Indecent Haste (The Restructure Part 3). This series investigates a prevalent occurrence throughout varied work places in New Zealand / Aotearoa, – ‘the restructure’. The intention is to describe the process of poorly handled change management, the psychological weaponry used and the ill informed reckonings […]
Vesuvius and You Part 2 (The Restructure). An elaborate game of tactic – but mostly chance – is being had. We see lazy dog bombs, menhirs, ice bergs, broken boats, spears, figureheads formed out of red clay dug up from the volcano closest to where […]
This series of drawings was produced at the Taipei Artist Village Residency Programme in January 2013. The project was about reacting to the site & ideally arriving at a series of distilled or essential qualities, without recourse to the literal. Taipei is a very complicated […]
I began this series by documenting (with photography) areas of Oakley Creek (Auckland, New Zealand) near where I work and live. The site is of historical and environmental import. I was especially interested in the Mount Albert end where the restoration is not yet […]
Celanie (2012) Celanie: Poems & Drawings after Paul Celan. Poems by Jack Ross & Drawings by Emma Smith. Introduction by Jack Ross. Afterword by Bronwyn Lloyd. ISBN: 978-0-473-22484-4. Pania Samplers, 3. Auckland: Pania Press, 2012. 168 pp. [cover design: Ellen Portch / Cover image: Emma […]
Images of stillness and silence began to interest me . These works were painted mostly at night in the winter time. My studio at the time, had large windows and the colours of fading light and silhouetted forms permeated the works.
Emma Smith 