Helen Smith
Australia, 1963
Helen Smith was born in the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales and lived in various cities in Australia before settling in Perth, where she currently lives and works. Since completing degrees in Design and Visual Arts with Honours, her work has been included in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Daimler Collection in Berlin, Artbank, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Australian Embassy in Madrid, the John Curtin Gallery at Curtin University, the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at the University of Western Australia and various private collections in Australia and Europe.
Smith’s recent significant exhibitions include Bliss at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, the AC4CA FABRIKculture project at Hégenheim in France, the AC4CA Print Portfolio exhibition at ParisConcret; SNO@BHO at Ballhaus Ost in Berlin and Yonder at PICA. In 2009 she was invited to exhibit at Hebel_121 Gallery in Basel, with Jeremy Kirwan-Ward, and has also exhibited at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, in the exhibitions Wallworks and Wall Power.
Recently Smith participated in research Residencies at Point B in New York and at the Institut Für Alles Mögliche in Berlin. Smith’s practice is influenced by a formal, minimalist perspective, with simplicity of form and geometric abstraction generally contributing to the outcome. Oil on canvas paintings, largescale wall works and a number of ongoing photographic series derived from an interest in social and cultural systems form the basis for her enquiry.