SMITH/STEWART
Stephanie Smith & Edward Stewart
Research interests:
Sculpture, Installation, Video, Sound, Live/Recorded, Performance, Sex, Gender, Intimacy and Power relations, Body, Language, Political, 'Non-visual', Experiential
Our CV evidences a sustained track record of internationally significant practice-based research activity in the field of contemporary art, with a particular focus on the interface between sculpture and performance: using video, sound, installation, performance and language as well as object making.
The nature of our collaborative practice - in effect as one artist, SMITH/STEWART- and as individual educators, means that over a period of more than 25 years, we've worked across these fields demonstrating work for exhibitions, publications and projects. Examples of the range and quality of outputs are outlined in relevant sections below.
Practice-based Research and Innovation:
Our research considers the relationship between sculpture and performance, with other enquiries around embodied experiences of art - making, viewing, participating. Fundamentally, we’re interested in how spatial activities might blur the boundaries and mix up the relationships between live and recorded, sculpture and installation; with a particular emphasis on the changing role or position of the viewer/participant.
Our work is predominantly about relationships, starting with our own. (We have worked collaboratively as SMITH/STEWART & been together as partners for 30 years). Our practice explores trust and communication and continually pushes the possibilities of collaboration: fundamental concerns revolve around human relations and what people are capable of doing to one another - physically and psychologically - in the name of love, in the name of belief, in the name of power (language, gender, identity, political, institutional). We want to engage the viewer with ideas about the nature of the relationships we have with one another (intimate, familial, personal, social). Central to this exploration is the body and its context and different media are used to explore ideas of separation, unity and ultimately, mortality.
We've always stated that we make sculpture whilst simultaneously challenging notions of what sculptural practice involves. In fact, we use language, film, video & sound, and make events and performances as well as objects and installations. These diverse works share certain qualities: a physical presence, an emphasis on the body and the implication of the viewer, which can feel intimate or confrontational. Often works involve placing the audience or invited participants in actual situations, where their decisions become part of the work.
Whether skewing power relations or disrupting space, our work is always stripped back to what’s essential and demands something of the viewer as an active constituent, not a mere spectator. We describe our artwork as ‘situation specific’, sometimes the viewer becomes an occupant of these situations but equally, the situations occupy the viewer – often staying with them or binding them together somehow, through their participation in the work.
'Each subject is a participant. Each viewer is a subject. Each subject is a viewer'.
(Laura Edbrook, The Fruit of Their Actions, MAP 25)
Our process of investigation finds form in a number of related ways, across a broad range of media. Questions and findings emerge through the continual act and durational process of making and sharing work. Our inquiry does not take a linear, sequential form: We often revisit works and develop work over a long period of time; with different iterations, at different points, in different contexts. Through this ongoing process, significant common (and evolving) threads can be seen to weave through the bodies of our collaborative research and art work. Everything is connected.
Recent works explore the fact that even the simplest acts may become a performance and we continue to expand the proposition that, “video’s real medium is a psychological situation” (Rosalind Krauss).
Our ongoing practice involves developing ideas / making bodies of work towards various exhibitions, screenings, events and publications - including an ongoing series of works on paper, which we consider as objects, rather than images.
Experience and achievements:
Firstly, in the form of exhibitions, a substantial body of work has been recognised and disseminated internationally in solo shows and group exhibitions.
For example, solo shows include: What have we done? The Changing Room, Stirling (2011), A Black Thread, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2002); Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (1999); Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern, Switzerland (1999) and Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London (1997).
Two further key examples are cited here:
- The 'live', mechanised sculptural installation we made for an abandoned factory space on Osborne St for the first GI in 2005, where we created a charged environment which incorporated: a sledgehammer handle suggestively banging the floor; a suspended wall moving, almost imperceptibly and a length of scaffolding circumnavigating a room, at neck height. www.smithstewart.co.uk/selected-works/osborne-street/ (video documentation + 8 x images)
- Enter Love and Enter Death, 2007, where handmade wooden beams divided the entire space (throughout Inverleith House, Edinburgh) and the bodies of those populating it. The viewer's vision was intentionally obstructed and their movement frustrated. The collision between physical, personal and psychological relationships became tangible. http://www.smithstewart.co.uk/selected-works/enter-love-and-enter-death/ (35 x images)
Significant group shows include those with fellow international Scottish- based artists eg: Generation, 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2014/15) and Glasgow:Kunsthalle Bern, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland (1997).
Key survey shows on video include, 'Seeing Time' SFMOMA, USA (1999/00) and the 1995 Lyon Biennale, France.
Group exhibitions specifically exploring 'Language' include: Incommunicado, Hayward Gallery National Touring Exhibition, various UK venues (2003/4); Acts of Voicing: On the Poetics and Politics of the Voice Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Germany (2012/13) & Language: The world of words, signs and gestures, Deutsches Hygiene Museum, Dresden, Germany (2016/17).
Internationally recognised exhibition publications:
As well as visually documenting and disseminating works from solo and group shows, our various publications contain key texts in relation to our artwork, eg. including those by artist/writer Tom McCarthy and curators/thinkers Iwona Blazwick, Ulrich Loock, Michele Theriault and Francis McKee.
Our work is also cited in key publications on contemporary art & video,eg: 2006 VIDEO ART, Taschen, Germany (ill.) ISBN: 978-3822829509; 2005 Video Art, A Guided Tour, Catherine Elwes. I. B. Tauris, London (ill.) ISBN: 978 1850435464; 2003 Video Art, Michael Rush. Thames & Hudson. London (ill.) ISBN 9780500284872; 2000 Fresh Cream, Phaidon Press, London (ill.) ISBN: 978-0714839240; 1999 New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, Michael Rush, Thames & Hudson, London, (ill.) ISBN: 978-0500203293.
Critical engagement around the work is also evidenced in reviews in national newspapers and art magazines, including articles by Catherine Elwes (Art Monthly, Make), Laura Edbrook (MAP), Iain Gale (Scotland on Sunday), Kirsten Norrie (Art Monthly), Moira Jeffery (The Scotsman), Claire Bishop (Evening Standard), Adrian Searle (The Guardian), Mark Wilsher (Art Monthly), Michael Rush (The New York Times) and Gilda Williams (Art/Text).
Many of these projects have relied on attracting funds from major institutions and organisations including: the British Council, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of England, Henry Moore Foundation, Glasgow School of Art Research Funding.
Frequently these opportunities have arisen from a process of invitation by key individuals or organisations. For example, we have worked with leading curators including: Kasper Konig (at Portikus, Frankfurt); Iwona Blazwick (on 'Toyama Now' and 'Now Here' Louisana exhibitions and various publications); Ulrich Loock (at Kunsthalle Bern and Kunstmuseum Luzern and various publications); Margot Heller (various projects); Francis McKee (on the first 'Glasgow International' and various publications); Steven Bode (Director, Film & Video Umbrella, London, various projects/publications); Keith Hartley ('Correspondences Scotland:Berlin' and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art); Juliana Engberg (Australian exhibitions); Paul Nesbitt (Inverleith House, Edinburgh); Graham Domke (Inverleith House and Dundee Contemporary Arts).
Our work has also been curated and presented alongside work by many leading artists including: Bruce Nauman, Marina Abramovic & Ulay, Samuel Beckett, Douglas Gordon, Martin Boyce, Bas Jan Ader, Vito Acconci, Dara Birnbaum, Dan Graham, Matthew Barney, Steve McQueen, Mariko Mori, Gary Hill, Jacques Lacan, Anri Sala, Marcus Steinweg, Yvonne Rainer, Louise Bourgeois, Cerith Wyn Evans, Ugo Rondinone, Chantal Akerman, Cheryl Donegan, Carolee Schneemann.
Our work has been recognised through artist awards, residencies and by being represented in public collections including the Arts Council of England, Tate and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
Our website is: smithstewart.co.uk
We use Instagram as a vehicle to share studio works and images/video excerpts, from unrealised - & occasionally existing - pieces @studiosmithstewart https://www.instagram.com/studiosmithstewart/
We also have work on UbuWeb https://ubu.com/index.html
SMITH/STEWART live and work together in Glasgow.
