Kathryn Smith

Kathryn Smith (b. Durban, South Africa, 1975) is a Johannesburg-based visual artist, curator and critic who works independently as well as with artists’ group The Trinity Session. She is registered for a PhD in Visual Arts at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

The recipient of the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year Award for visual arts 2004, she is currently preparing for her first major solo exhibition, which opens at the National Arts Festival in July 2004 and will travel to all major museums in South Africa. A multidisciplinary approach characterizes Smith’s creative production. Producing art, curating exhibitions and publishing critical writing are all aspects of what constitutes the visual arts industry, and Smith participates in building this industry on many levels.

As an artist, her work is predominantly research-based, delving into archives and research and immersing herself in the not-so-public information about well-known events, people and places. Working principally in photography and video, but also in performance, she employs pseudo-forensic working methods that recreate or reinvent situations, and re-presents them not as complete histories, but as abstracted or suggestive moments. Acknowledging the secret histories and unspoken desires that exist between private and public space, Smith’s work flirts with the meeting of reality, fiction, fantasy and desire, and is innately tied to the romantic notion of the art of murder. She has exhibited on numerous exhibitions both in South Africa and abroad, including Paris, Iceland and New York, and has published widely, both locally and internationally.

With The Trinity Session, she is involved in a number of social, public, education and art/business projects as well as primary research into the role of the creative industries within transforming urban contexts. Currently formalising a specialist Masters in Fine Arts degree in Spatial Practice in partnership with the Wits School of Arts, this programme is one aspect of a two-year appointment to commission works of art for the public realm in central Johannesburg, as part of the Cultural Arc, stretching from the cultural precinct of Newtown up to the new Constitutional Court of South Africa. Other projects have included managing public works commissions for the Faraday Precinct transport and health centre in downtown Johannesburg, conducting research commissioned by the International Labour Office into the arts and crafts industries in the 14 countries of the South African Development Community region. A brand-new, multi-purpose art space, called The Premises, has recently been built for The Trinity Session to manage.

The Trinity Session have participated in residencies at KunstRaum, Linz (Austria) and Station Mir, Hérouville St-Clair (France) and have been invited participants at Transmediale 03 for Cross Border Cultures, and Ars Electronica (2003) for Radiotopia and E-Lobby SEARCH. They have curated an anthology of South African video art called In No Particular Order which has been shown worldwide, as well as the +27 Sessions, a collection of digital, electronic and video works for online broadcast for the Translocal Channel/How Latitudes Become Forms (Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis).

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