(re)arrangements

Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, Sydney

26 June – 31 July 2021

(re)arrangements explores how strategies of redeployment and recontextualization can generate new ways of seeing and understanding. The exhibition brought together the work of ten artists with transformative approaches to a diverse range of media and subject matter. By fragmenting and transforming existing artworks, objects and found images, the works in (re)arrangements enable new ideas and forms to take shape.

Smith sources images of vehicle-born improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from the web, paints them, and then re-uses these painted images in new works. Smith’s abstract structures prompt audiences to question and decode prevailing narratives. An exterior form, tank-like, has been fragmented, flattened and re-formed, its planes forming shadowy architectural structures. Each panel is stained in an autumnal tone, connected by a worn texture recalling the smudges and striations of photocopier toner. Like a low-resolution digital image made real, each oil-painted plane suggests a pixel which has been enlarged and reimagined as part of a new whole. Stuart Smith sources images of vehicle-born improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from the web, paints them, and then re-uses these painted images in new two- and three- dimensional works. Smith’s strategy of repurposing reflects the context of vehicle- borne IEDs, which are used in guerrilla warfare in the Middle East and emerge out of a situation of resourcefulness and responsiveness. Examining weapons of war from a new angle, Smith’s abstract structures prompt audiences to question and decode prevailing political, social and historical narratives.