Matt Smith is a textile artist and ceramicist who has an
intriguing exhibition at the Ink_d Gallery in Brighton, England, which opens, July 4 2015.
The exhibition is entitled ‘Trouble with History’ and will
feature a collection of textile-based art made from vintage tapestries and
domestic textile kits, which have been unpicked, reworked, and subsequently
subverted from their perceived norm.
I understand that not everyone is going to be comfortable
with the idea of the level of textile manipulation that Matt uses in his work,
but this isn’t a quirky exhibition or one that is done for the sake of it,
there are some real issues here and they tend to be issues that affect us all,
that should make us think, and perhaps even make some uncomfortable.
The results of Matt’s intervention and manipulation is to shift
the emphasis of our standard perception of the norm. Without a real focus to
the composition, is there a connection we can forge, can we identify, sympathize,
or generally empathize with subject matter that seems to be missing any
connection points? Does the composition merely become an exercise in
disconnection?
To obscure the identity of the subjects of the work, faces
and sections of the original compositions that would have been intended to have
been that main focus, Matt has deliberately severed any emotional bond we may
have formed with the characters that sit, play, love, and so it is in life.
Preconceptions quickly disappear in Matt’s work, we don’t
know the age, sex, or skin color of the individuals featured. Without being
able to connect with those markers of age, gender, or race we cannot make
judgements.
It is a way of getting us to think, to stop a moment and
trouble ourselves as to the issues involved in Matt’s work. By removing our
complacency of understanding, we have to think about the nameless and the
unidentified in history, those who struggled to find a place in societies that
were often violently hostile towards them.
By withdrawing from making connections with those in our
community that we disapprove of, we in many ways disconnect them from the
community, they become outsiders, they become a disapproved lifestyle at best,
a plague on the norm at worst.
By losing any significant identity with the ‘different’,
society loses interest in what happens to them, they often become rootless and
disconnected. ‘Them’ and ‘us’ has been a constant for those who have wished to
manipulate the human condition throughout history. If you can remove any
personality traits from ‘them’, any empathic connection, any sympathy, or
shared experience, then they become a distant, cold, unknown and unknowable
entity, and therefore anything can be done to them because they obviously
deserve it as they are no longer ‘us’
Matt is interested in issues that surround the identity and
stigma so often attached to these states of being ‘different’, which is very
often a state that is imposed from without, rather than within. We are all
different and we are all unique, but to many societies whether in history, or
in our own contemporary world, difference is a controlled substance, and
uniqueness is well underplayed.
Matt’s exhibition ‘Trouble with History’ at Ink_d Gallery,
Brighton runs from July 4-August 2 2015. More information can be found at the
Ink_d website.
Matt also has a comprehensive website which can be found
here – Matt Smith
Matt has also been awarded Artist in Residence at the
V&A Museum, London, from October 2015.
