ALISON SMITH | SOLO EXHIBITION
Alison Smith reimagines portraiture as a means to examine the complexities of identity and the shifting politics of the human face. Drawing on personal experience, mediated imagery, and historical portraiture traditions, she uses her perspective as an adopted person to question how identity is shaped, perceived, and projected.
Her process is one of deconstruction and reconstruction, dismantling facial forms to the edge of recognisability. This visual unravelling mirrors the psychological ambiguities embedded within selfhood. The absence of colour is intentional – both an aesthetic restraint and a psychosocial state that sharpens the emotional charge of each work.
In this new body of work, Smith expands her practice into ceramics, extending her inquiry into the fragility and mutability of the face in three dimensions.
Alison Smith uses portraiture as a vehicle to explore the complexities and ambiguities of the human face. With extensive research into themes of identity and face politics she works from personal experience, mediated images, and directly from life. In this work Alison uses her own experience as an adopted person to investigate and challenge perceptions surrounding the diversity of human experiences of identity.
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