PRESS RELEASE
MARTIN SMITH – OPENS AT RYAN RENSHAW GALLERY
TUESDAY APRIL 22ND
In his first show since his ACCLAIMED EXHIBITION AT THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SYDNEY ‘PRIMAVERA’ and as part of the QUEENSLAND FESTIVAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY, Martin Smith will be exhibiting a solo show at Ryan Renshaw Gallery.
Martin hand cuts stories and lyrics from well-known songs into large-scale photographs. The cuts act as a metaphor for memories and the removed letters spill discarded onto the floor or fall inside the frame beneath the work. His stories are humorous, often dark and always moving.
I met up again with Melissa and some friends on the train to see ‘Back to the Future’. It had been a week or so since I had seen Melissa so I walked straight past her. After being alerted to her presence my signs of visible surprise were the first indication that this was not going to go well. We all settled in the cinema in couple order and after the opening credits my friends started putting their arms around their dates and the pressure was on for me to do the same. When Marty McFly was introduced to the Flux Capacitor for the first time I took that as my queue for action and quickly whipped my arm over Melissa’s head and rested my elbow on her neck and let my hand drop naturally. Feeling very pleased with myself I started to take in the sensations when I suddenly realised that my hand had formed a perfect cup to her right breast. Not wanting to draw attention to this fact and not wanting to relinquish my good fortune I was paralysed with fear, excitement and embarrassment and my hand sat there unmoved for most of the film. By the time Marty McFly had saved his parent’s relationship my hand was starting to cramp and twitch uncontrollably like a dying fish. Each finger would uncontrollably poke into her soft fleshy boob as I was desperately trying to stop them and mentally record what it felt like. Melissa thankfully took action and moved her shoulder so my twitching cramping hand fell on neutral ground. When the movie finished we didn’t speak again and when Melissa got off the train we said our goodbyes and I never saw her again.
Into other images Smith carves the remembered lyrics from songs. Yet like memories them selves these lyrics have been unconsciously and imperceptibly changed to fit one’s recollections rather than matched to the reality.
Robin Daw writes of his work:
The stories recall epochs past, his own recollections of adolescence survive intact - convincingly curious and cruel revelations of love among the ballads of suburban melancholia. Text and image blur. Like the rain on a windscreen, you need to focus on one or the other, and can’t see both at the same time. With Smith’s work, one reads through the image to understand the shape of the letters. The story literally punctuates the image, paralleling how one’s own memory of an incident from the past, indelibly imprinted, is nevertheless recalled with gaps and holes.
Ryan Renshaw gallery has fostered the work of Martin since the first few months of opening in 2004. Martin has undertaken two solo shows with the gallery and has also travelled to Japan as part of a group show with Digmeout Gallery in Osaka.
In the last year Martin’s work has been has show in ‘Primavera 2007’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Los Angeles and will exhibit at Melbourne’s Centre for Contemporary Photography. His work is in numerous private collections, Artbank and recently has been acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery.