Projected Text, 2009

At once gloomy and playful, Suzanne Smith’s artwork is something of an uptight exploration of brevity and inappropriateness.  She tends to dwell on the mundane trauma of social interaction - quietly obsessing on the line between irritation and arousal.  A desire for control has been betrayed in previous work by the dictation of rhythm, alphabetisation of images and the striving for manual perfection through the painstakingly handmade.  

Born in 1974, Nottingham, UK, Suzanne Smith is a Fine Art graduate of Manchester School of Art. Smith went on to study Cultural Theory at Lancaster University, furthering her interest in the cultural embedment of Fine Art production and reception, and the inescapable political implications of the artistic product. Smith is based in Manchester and is co-founder of the 100th Monkey artist collective. She has recently exhibited at Vrits in Basel, and venues in London and Market Bosworth.

100th Monkey Curatorial Approach: Trade City

Continuing 100th Monkey’s ongoing interest in the role of work-life in the life-life of the artist, we are pleased to present new work by Chris Butler and Suzanne Smith.

Butler shows discarded objects gathered whilst working as an art technician in the City’s galleries. In a necessary attempt to incorporate his working and artistic life, he embarks on a mission to keep and create, dividing his attention at work between the task in hand and the selection of fruitful objects. For Trade City Butler presents this decision to choose as well as the visible traces of his own labour.

Considered alongside Butler’s objects, Suzanne Smith’s specially commissioned text piece opens up the discussion to consider the wider consequence of working-to-survive in the output of the emerging artist, the conflict between the necessary slog of financially sustaining an art practice and ensuring that art practice warrants sustaining. Whilst working in the office of a city art unit, Smith ruminates on the influence of work environment on the artist’s resultant practice - art about art and art about typing.