MARTIN SMITH I am Fortunate and Bored
by Joseph Breikers, 2009
*sigh* Youth. That worrisome time of Sturm und Drang, of never ending winters…shoes heavy and sodden with the mire of cognitive dissonance.
Young males can be fucking idiots when they are in the company of other young males. In this greenhouse, away from any figures of authority to which they may be held accountable, a perverse ritual of one-upmanship is often played out.
Overseas and temporarily relieved of any homely character expectations, this ritualistic one-upmanship is often intensified and things happen which one may later have cause to regret or realise were in fact life threatening. I think advertising gurus and personal trainers alike call this Character-Building. A noble term indeed, but one which smacks of an indolent attempt to make civil a primal cocktail of boredom, angst and idiocy.
Smith’s diaristic texts in this new body of work are redolent of that same boredom, angst and idiocy. At times the tone is confessional, but I detect a hint of glee. Almost as if Smith(ie/y) is gasconading over his transoceanic extravagances. These incised words, whilst a ritualistic assault on the sensual photographic surface, appear as a kind of corporeal manifestation of a textual struggle between sincerity and parody.
Not only do these photographs function as Monuments to Martin’s (M)Transoceanic MisadventuresTM, they also serve as a performance documentation of sorts. Possibly most importantly, they are the by-product of a performance both aesthetic and idiosyncratic; a fetishised record of dirty deeds executed at below cost.
Nevertheless, whatever verbal diatribe I have assailed your starry orbs with, the work of Martin Smith(ie/y) is a divine plateau where the seemingly incongruous swing in pendulous symmetry….
Joseph Breikers is a Brisbane-based artist, curator and writer
MARTIN SMITH PRESS RELEASE
I am Fortunate and Bored at Ryan Renshaw Gallery, October 2009
It is with great pleasure that we announce the opening of Martin Smith’s exhibition ‘I am Fortunate and Bored’ at Ryan Renshaw Gallery.
Once again Martin Smith has created a body of work that poignantly delves into his own psyche. Employing his trademark hand-cut technique, Smith works are imbued with tinges of nostalgia inviting us to look not only into his past, but also our own. 'Photography captures the classic moments of our lives, like your first day at school, a birthday celebration, a holiday,' explains Martin 'but it doesn't capture those other parts of your life that, although in that particular moment perhaps seem unimportant, are sometimes much more significant in shaping us as human beings.'
Smith's stories provide a whimsical and highly personal account of his life. The lettering for his text is cut from of the photographic surface, scarring them and giving them what he readily admits is a kind of sculptural quality. These stories recall epochs past, his own recollections of adolescence and early adulthood that survive intact. They are convincingly curious and cruel revelations of love among the ballads of suburban melancholia. Text and image blur. Like rain on a windscreen, you need to focus on one or the other, and can’t see both at the same time.
'Each letter is hand cut from the printed photo, so there's only ever one made ... which goes against a lot of the mechanical easily reproducible aspects of photography.' The time it takes to meticulously carve a story, letter by letter, out of a photograph also disrupts the essence of photographic time. In Smith's works, the 'snap' of a camera is paired with this laborious technique. Perhaps to suggest that although photographs take an instant to make, they are only in the present for a moment, but they are also loaded with the past and the future.
The cut letters fall away to the bottom of the picture and are captured by the picture frame, sitting at the bottom of each image like fallen tears or perhaps half-remembered stories that become jumbled in the mind, played over and over again.
Martin Smith's artwork focuses on those small moments that glance into a life. Tending to gather photographs, as opposed to taking them, his works as a consequence offer wry observations rather than grand statements. The loss or absence inherent in photographic images, which are suggestive of another time and place, is echoed in the physical loss of the words cut into the surface of the works. One story is inscribed on another, just like one memory is laid upon another, or one version of a story embellishes another. The resulting works are replete with the same ambiguity, melancholy and richness as memory.