Join us at Wester Gallery for the opening of Otherwise, Excess, a new exhibition by Stuart Smith. The painterly results for ‘Otherwise, Excess’ investigate a transformative approach to fragmentation, enabling new ideas, logics, and orders to surface from existing artwork, found imagery and waste material. The purely abstract oil on panel outcomes, sit alongside canvas and paper ‘by-products’ ,emergent only through the originals production. New ideas, logics and orders are discovered in overlooked margins and discarded material destined for the studio bin.

Repurposing is strategically employed as a catalyst for new work. Part of a new economy of practice, cyclical, reinventive, and less wasteful. Whereby a piece of pre-used irregular shaped masking tape can become a featured element of a collage, or paint residue found on newsprint, previously used to blot excess liquid is renewed on more receptive surfaces, canvas and paper.

The fragmentation of imagery that already exists in the public consciousness can be a political weapon, as shown by the Dadaists. I re-examine my own collection of found imagery sourced online of real-world objects with abstract qualities, subjects I believe hold political agency or a power to disrupt. Images such as hand-built vessels made from scrap materials such as tarp, duct tape and foam, titled ‘chug boats’, created by refugees fleeing across the Florida Strait. Immediately discarded upon landing, their remains are a testament to the ingenuity and creativity shown by those seeking to escape social and economic hardship.

By mirroring this resourceful approach to materials, at the end of my painterly journey very little content or subject matter remains. Just traces of an original image barely visible beneath fragmented forms connected only by a worn texture and dark inky tone recalling the smudges and striations of a photocopier.

Opening night Friday 13 February, 6pm - 8pm
Friday 13 - 28 February

Supported by Young Henrys, Symphonia Wines, Heaps Normal, NON, Seas Salt & Sage Catering

Free entry | All welcome