Shannon Smith is an Australian born artist of Peruvian descent. Her practice is driven by the question of how to express physical sensation through sculptural form. Working primarily in the discipline of stone carving, Smith engages with the tradition of direct carving, to explore how the intersection of subject matter and materiality can shape the viewer’s experience. Considering the human figure in fragmented and abstracted forms, Smith’s carvings allude to the boundaries of the body yet endeavour to express an inner vitality.
Smith holds a Master of Fine Art from the National Art School, Sydney, where she completed a BFA and BFA (Hons). Smith has undertaken several international artist residencies, was granted a Parker’s Fine Art Award, and exhibited as a finalist in the Tom Bass Prize for Figurative Sculpture (2018). Her work has been acquired by QANTAS, the M G Dingle & G B Hughes Collection, the National Art School Archive: Student Collection, and other private collections through purchased and commissioned works.
“A liminal interval, a pause between states is evoked by Shannon Smith’s sculptures. Her carved stone forms are sinuous, modulated ovoids, occasionally presented in pairs, as parts that echo and embrace each other. The beauty and clarity, indeed the attraction of abstraction is apparent, in the ability of these forms to evoke sensory ideas and oppositions without spelling them out. While we know that stone as a material is hard, cold and unyielding, looking at Smith’s work reduces it to soft, pliable fleshiness.”
Image courtesy of Felix Forest