About the Artist

Victoria Smith was born in Galway on the west coast of Ireland. In 1998 she graduated with a distinction in her BA degree in Print and as a nomineee for the NCEA art graduate of the year in Ireland, from the Crawford college of Art and Design. Following this, Victoria was slected to travel to Botswana as part of the British Council recruitment scheme.

A member of the studio 32 group in Croydon, Victoria is now working part-time as a teacher and is studying for her masters in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths College.

The earlier work reflects the theme of identity, roots to a place and is a celebration of her great-grandmother through the use of photography, sculpture and installations. These pictures of the family were cropped and as a child Victoria watched as her grandfather painted over photographs reiterating personal memories linked to her family and now her artwork.

Using a similar technique the paintings which were created after the African trip are reminiscent of Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Egypt and Ethiopia, as they allow your eye to travel over the painterly and collage surface allowing the viewer to discover the memories.

The repetitive device of the Grid method conveys a need to contain these memories on the preserved, waxed, layered, stitched surface of the canvas. Eve Hesse has influenced the artist through the use of colours, box shapes, use of the found object which echoes the female subconscious in which there is an outpouring of materials.

The work engages and inspires with the hybrid of tactile images, which exist confidently within the contradiction of its media. The paintings encourage you to take a journey to Africa.

CV/Resumé