SMITH/STEWART
PRESENT TENSE
21 September - 19 October 2024
Reid Gallery and Reid Ground Floor Corridor

"PRESENT TENSE is a new exhibition by artists and long-time collaborators SMITH/STEWART. Since the mid 1990’s Stephanie Smith and Eddie Stewart have been making work together as SMITH/STEWART. They work and live in Glasgow and both teach in The School of Fine Art.

Their work explores interdependence and the relationships we have with one another. They make sculptural installations, with a primary emphasis on the body and the implication of the viewer. Their practice develops out of collaborative dialogue and material investigation, to construct situations in which the viewer becomes central as an active constituent. Pared back to what’s essential, they are interested in the co-existence of connection and separation, power and powerlessness. Of things shifting in and out of sync with one another, coming together and moving apart.

They are showing a new body of work in the Reid Gallery and alongside, in the Reid corridor, they present material in relation to their process of making, never usually shown.

SMITH/STEWART’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and they have participated in key survey shows on both video and language. They have had solo exhibitions in NGBK Berlin, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Portikus Frankfurt am Main, Chisenhale Gallery London, Inverleith House Edinburgh. Their work is in public collections including Arts Council England, The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and Tate."
(Gallery Handout)

Accompanying Events:
- Public gallery tour, led by the artists
- Video Screening, introduced by Laura Haynes (GSA) with audience Q+A

The research and development of the body of new sculptural installation work shown was, in part, supported by a summer residency period in the Reid Gallery. This was also informed by two critical conversations with researchers Ross Birrell (GSA Research) & Viviana Checchia (VOID, Derry).

We worked closely with Jenny Brownrigg & John Farrell (GSA Exhibitions). We collaborated with Anna Gordon (Head of S&J, GSA) to make a double silver ring '&'. This was bespoke to us, made for holding hands and worn by the artists for the duration of the exhibition opening, as an unannounced performance. Fabrication of the installation works was supported by GSA TSD, particularly Giulia Lazzaro & Nick Carlin and external sculptural fabricators, Sculpture & Design (Glasgow) Ltd.

Works shown:
Three new sculptural installations, for the three adjoining spaces of the Reid Gallery and unannounced public performance (Reid Gallery)

- 'Present tense' (2024) Two work tables, two sledgehammer handles and motors

- 'The weight of the world' (2024) Steel and fabric

- 'Approach aslant' (2024) Steel beam and motor

Sculptural work and printed material (6 x vitrines, Reid Ground Floor Corridor):

- '&' (2024)
Double silver ring for holding hands, made for SMITH/STEWART by Anna Gordon
+ Wire and copper prototypes

- Cast aluminium sledgehammer handles and painted bronze ‘skulls’

- Inked sledgehammer handle cross section with woodcut on paper

- Structure maquette, steel and magnets

- Aluminium template, plywood sections Woodcut on paper

- 'Cleave' (2024) Divided SMITH/STEWART solo publications

GSA Exhibitions Report attached for info.

Exhibition photography by SMITH/STEWART.

SMITH/STEWART PRESENT TENSE
A solo exhibition of three new sculptural installations and unannounced public performance (Reid Gallery)
Sculptural work and printed material (6 x vitrines, Reid Ground Floor Corridor)

Primary Objectives:

- A significant body of work for solo exhibition, PRESENT TENSE, made through ongoing practical, material, relational experimentation & philosophical enquiry
- This investigation primarily takes shape in the central form of the most ambitious work we’ve made to date, an ‘impossible’ structure, exploring power & control
- To develop an iterative focus through critical conversations, which expand on the context of our work & process as research

Our research practice as SMITH/STEWART is art-based research, where ‘the artist-researchers develop and reflect on their own creative process which is subjective in practice’ (Borgdorff, 2011).

Context:
The contemporary socio-political context of the world from which our work emerges, in these times of conflict, displacement & existential uncertainty, gives urgency to our enquiry. Our work interrogates notions of power, authority & the orchestration of people, compelling us to ask challenging questions, the timeliness of which is vital. The situation of the adjacent devastated Mackintosh building Reid also resonates with the work.

Our uncompromising enquiry raises unsettling tensions. The work creates new possibilities/knowledge by exploiting the instrinsic properties of particular material collisions, not only in individual pieces but in relationships between works & by directly co-opting the exhibition space to form a charged environment. Our rigorous, dialogic enquiry, comes from a collaborative relationship, underpinning everything: Exploring trust, commitment, intimacy, duality, disruption & interconnectedness, specifically at the interface of sculpture & live/recorded performance, resulting in works which construct situations, in which the viewer/body is central. “The meaning is lacking without the participation of the recipient” (Ulrich Loock, ‘Smith/Stewart: Medium as Metaphor’).

Key contemporary artists working in the field include Miroslaw Balka, Alistair MacLennan, Anne Imhof. The exacting spare writing of Samuel Beckett; Rosalind Krauss’ ‘Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism’, proposing “video’s real medium is a psychological situation”; questions of power/co-existence in Jackie Wang’s (2018) ‘Carceral Capitalism’ & psychiatrist R D Laing’s, ‘Knots’ (1970) series of dialogue-scenarios describing the intricacies of human relationships of love, dependency & uncertainty, are contextual touchstones.
Fundamentally our lens remains our relationship, relative to wider universal issues of the present.

Overarching Research question:
What are the ways in which our work can explore ideas of duality in terms of connection & separation, power & powerlessness, through collaboration, sculptural materiality, installation, performance?

Questions relating to Reid iteration:
- How does our pared-back work confront the body of the viewer, in an intense situation which stays with them?
- What are the impacts of specific material choices & their different poetic/emotional registers of meaning?
- How does the viewer’s own experience affect their response to the work/s & the readings that may arise?
'Each subject is a participant. Each viewer is a subject. Each subject is a viewer'. (Laura Edbrook, The Fruit of Their Actions, MAP 25)

Methodology:
- Exhibition making: Our sculptural installation/s substantively push material to extremes, expanding the space to the edge of what’s possible. Here, the metaphorical & physical weight of brutal steel interconnecting beams, against the delicacy of a piece of fabric, the humanity of an item of clothing, or the resonance of sound. Large-scale physical boundaries which disrupt space/direct the viewer, co-exist with intimate interpersonal scale of two people holding hands, connected by a double ring. Adjacent mechanised pieces relentlessly thump out time, acoustically falling in/out of sync. In addition (in the Reid corridor), we present a hinterland of selected artefacts from our current process, never usually shown.

- Critical conversation & reflection: Two critical conversations as part of the process to develop the framing of our research practice, with Ross Birrell (GSA) & Viviana Checchia, Director, Void Art Centre, Derry & researcher with ‘Research Agency’ project.

Accompanying exhibition events included:
- an artist led gallery tour
- SMITH/STEWART video screening of early single screen works, introduced by Laura Haynes, followed by audience Q+A

Future outputs TBC:
- Publication
- Journal
- Exhibitions

• https://www.gsaexhibitions.co.uk
• https://www.smithstewart.co.uk
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