Kathryn SMITH, (b. 1975)
From The Murder Series: Yellow Boy
2004
Lambda print
60 x 80 cm
BIOGRAPHY
Kathryn Smith is an interdisciplinary visual artist, curator and researcher.
A graduate of art and science programmes at Wits University, the University of Dundee and Liverpool John Moores University, she is also trained in forensic facial imaging and advocates for vital pracademic exchange between operational, institutional and research environments.
Her forensic and curatorial work come together as dual expressions of critical care for bodies, infrastructures and non-human things, directed at mutual visibility and legibility.
She is a senior lecturer in Visual Arts at Stellenbosch University and senior curator at A4 Arts Foundation, District Six, Cape Town.
Smith contributed to the development of the MA Art in Science programme at LJMU and has ongoing research collaborations with Face Lab.
Her Standard Bank Young Artist Award exhibition Euphemism showed at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (now Makhanda) before touring nationally (2004 – 5).
In 2009, Smith co-curated (with Roger van Wyk) Dada South? Exploring Dada Legacies in South African Art: 1960 to the present which showed at the Iziko South African National Gallery in 2009 and investigated Dada tendencies in South African art for the past 50 years. In the same year, she opened Serialworks, her apartment studio in the Woodstock neighbourhood in Cape Town, as a project space.
Smith edited monographic books on Penny Siopis (2005) and Sam Nhlengethwa (2006), which were published by Goodman Gallery Editions. She conceptualised and edited One Million and Forty-Four Years (and Sixty Three Days), an anthology of current attitudes towards the avant-garde (2007) and was a researcher and author of Barend de Wet (2011), both published by SMAC Gallery.
Smith’s works have been exhibited and collected in South Africa and elsewhere.