Studio Project 09: November 2007

Sandy Smith: Looks So Wrong, Feels So Right
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Sandy Smith’s work includes elements of performance, sculpture, text and installation, combining lengthy processes of making with an irreverent or flippant sense of humour. The work of art is demoted to a hard-wrought but whimsical decoration, enthusiastically (if somewhat naively) toying with references to our history of searching for meaning. The visual language of exploration is used here, combined with its contemporary cultural outpourings, to describe a human state of hope and beautifully naÔve optimism.

For the duration of the studio residency, Smith has been working daily to transform the gallery from a breeze block cube, to a dense flowering jungle. Using the craft materials of school projects (crepe and tissue paper, pipe cleaners and paper mache), Smith is creating ëan idyllic refuge for artí that is in a constant state of flux. Careful and repetitive processes of making will result in an installation that will lead the viewer into a fantasy setting full of ëhope and beautiful optimismí.

Sandy Smith was born in Dunbar in 1983 and graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2005 (B.A. Hons). Recent solo exhibitions include: ëI thought it would be more personalí at the Koh-I-Noor Gallery, Copenhagen (Nov 2006) and ëThe world is becoming betterí at the Glasgow Sculpture Studios Gallery (June 2006). Smith lives and works in Glasgow.