Sally Smart (b. Quorn, Australia) is recognized internationally for large-scale cut-out assemblage installations and increasingly, performance. Her practice engages identity politics and the relationships between the body, thought and culture, including transnational ideas that have shaped cultural history. Smart’s most recent work includes artisan embroideries as assemblage elements. In her project The Choreography of Cutting she re-imagines and encapsulates a dynamic discourse between the historical and contemporary avantgarde, using experimental performance, costume design and visual art forms, mapping multiple ideas, temporalities and space; a materialisation of thought, gesture and action. The recipient of numerous awards, Smart is currently holding a position as Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and also as board member of the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA). Recent projects include her Art Collaboration with Italian fashion house Marni for the 2017 Pre-Fall Woman’s and the Men’s Fall-Winter Collections; Performance/ Punakawan/ Chout (The Choreography of Cutting) at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide in 2017; The Choreography of Cutting at Postmasters Gallery, New York (2016); Odyssey: Navigating Nameless Seas at the Singapore Art Museum (2016); Conversation: Endless Acts of Human History (w. Entang Wiharso) at the Galeri Nasional Indonesia in Jakarta (2016); the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art; Negotiating this World at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (2013) and The Pedagogical Puppet at the Contemporary Galleries of the University of Connecticut in the US (2012). Smart is living and working in Melbourne, Australia. Her work is represented in significant public and private collections worldwide.
photographed by Gregory Lorenzutti