Ian Smith

Ian Smith was born in Cairns, Queensland in 1950. Smith’s work continues to be exhibited widely with a national touring survey exhibition ‘Ian Smith: On and Off the Road’ launched at the Gold Coast City Art Gallery in 2010. Additional major exhibitions include the Archibald Prize, AGNSW (2010); Family Guy, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery (2009); Art of the Nude, Albury Regional Art Gallery (2008) and Three Australian Painters, Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Shenzhen, China (2007). His work is represented in major national and international collections including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Standaad Boekhandel, Belgium, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery and The University of Queensland Art Museum.

In this painting of a domestic interior Ian Smith responds to an arrangement of objects, which once belonged to his mother. As if on the shelf too is a self-portrait of the artist reflected in a diamond shaped mirror glowing in the afternoon light. The objects have a life on a shelf but have they passed their shelf life? Probably not, given the cascade of their energetic patterning and colours cascading from the shelf and reaching out above the shelf. This is a work that seesaws us into the probable past and maybe the possible future.

Shelf Life Still Life
2008
Oil & acrylic on canvas
61x73cm
Courtesy of Heiser Gallery
view at West End Bakery
163 Boundary St
West End
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