Artist Biography
Sally Smart was born in Quorn, South Australia, in 1960. She graduated from the South Australian School of Art in 1981 and completed postgraduate studies at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1988, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in 1991. Informed by feminist discourses surrounding psychoanalytic theory and her interest in the anti-art movements of Dada and Surrealism, Smart's fragmentary assemblages and collage cut-out installations explore corporeality, gender and identity politics. Since the mid 1990s Smart has exhibited extensively, both nationally and internationally. Major exhibitions include Surface Charge, Anderson Gallery, Richmond, USA, 2005; Shadow Farm, Wollongong City Gallery, New South Wales, 2003; Parameters Head: A La Ronde, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, 2000; FamilyTreeHouse, Project Space, ARCO, Madrid, 1999; and Femmage, Shadows and Symptoms, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan, 1999. Sally Smart lives in Melbourne and is represented by Kaliman Gallery, Sydney; Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide and Postmasters Gallery, New York.
Works
The exquisite pirate 2004–06
Artist Statement
Of my research on women pirates, it is Kathy Acker's book Pussy King of the Pirates that resonated through my mind while making The exquisite pirate. In a section titled, 'The beginning of piracy: The origins of poetry', Acker wrote (p. 193), 'Imagination arises / When there's no more reason / So the mind can make / A kingdom'. In another section, 'The sinking of a ship' (p. 271), Acker continues along the same theme, 'There would be a sign: dreams end … Then there would be paths and they would get jumbled, and bones, and they all get jumbled, and all of them would combine and then there would be a tall tree that, according to the map, was red. And off to the side, a boat next to a black stone and a white stone'.
