Matt Smart is a sculptor and installation artist. He works in bioresin, jesmonite, fibreglass, molehills and cloth. Matt exhibits in sculpture parks, arts and music festivals, music venues, and outdoor public spaces.
The works reflect the earth as a layered record and influence upon our existences, and the continuum between facts and history, truth and beauty. Our acts leave emotional and physical legacy creating and growing from the layers that we tread.
Continuity and sustainability are principal themes. Matt endeavours to share land art sensations in urban settings, often with humour. He also explores the social treatment of tribes, diasporas and gender.
Matt Smart’s practice is informed through natural resources research, environmental economics, street art projects, music, prehistoric cave art and the origins of transmitted communications and leisure, native north American tribal history, collectives and common land rights, ornamental hermits, and archaeological excavations through which his team located the remains of two Saints and imperial heirs in a Russian forest.
Technically, Matt works to develop new construction techniques and ways to use materials to achieve robust, lightweight sculpture. Such an approach can expand the possibilities of how and where public sculptures are installed (including on walls and roofs, and mobile installations), and to reduce the material input and carbon footprint of public sculpture. The sculptures are available for fixed periods by rental/leasing arrangements, which include installation and transport of the works.
Matt Smart has been sculpting since summer 2014. He established and ran a South London gallery, exhibiting group and solo shows of artists with clinically diagnosed psychiatric conditions. Academically he is published in psychology and psychiatry.
His first solo exhibition was in June 2016 in Oxford. He is on music, arts and fringe festival organising committees and groups. Matt’s sculptures are exhibited in the Nomadic Community Gardens, a brownfield land community project in Shoreditch (the UK capital of street art), in a private collection in Australia, and occasionally at events with a UK record label. His works will be shown this year at Noisily Festival and in group shows with a regional Arts Development Agency. He has exhibited at Shambala Festival, Borde Hill Sculpture Gardens, the Sheffield Botanical Gardens, and Ludlow Fringe Festival, where he has twice been the sculptor for the annual ‘5th Plinth’ and was the Festival’s second Artist in Residence.
Matt has entered one art competition: ‘Change The World’, about social and environmental responsibility, at Oxford City Hall. There were 200 entrants. Matt won 3 of the 10 prizes, including the Grand Prize.
For full information and images see www.MattSmart.org, and see updates and news via Instagram.
The works illustrate relationships between social and personal development, growth, and resourcefulness. They show how the earth gives us physical being, comfort and emotional strength, within a broader connective existence. They celebrate the earth and us.
Matt has four pieces of work at the Cotswold Sculpture Park this year:
Many Happy Returns
Medium Clothing and boots: cotton and synthetic materials, with metal fixings, and polyurethane and wax-based water protection. Polymer fleece. Earth splash: Stainless steel wire, paper, PVA, bioresin, polyester resin and glass matting, plant materials (heather, picea conifer). Earth mixtures.
Dimensions (approx.) 130cm x 170cm x 160cm
Price Contact the artist 07500 118791 matt.smart@mail.com
Evermore
Medium Cassini plaster. Wool and cotton. Bioresin. Wooden armature with galvanised wire. Jesmonite. Stainless steel fixings, brackets and anchor points.
Dimensions (approx.) 110cm x 120cm x 90cm
Price £300. Contact the artist 07500 118791 matt.smart@mail.com
Cherokee Chairs
Medium Garments, bioresin, polyester resin. Oak, and oak chairs. Stainless steel fixings.
Dimensions (approx.) 110cm x 200cm x 80cm
Price £400. Contact the artist 07500 118791 matt.smart@mail.com
Growth
Medium Molehills. Wooden armature with stainless steel and galvanised wire. Plaster scrim. Polyurethane, polyester and bioresin. Fibregglass. Stainless steel fixings, brackets and anchor points.
Dimensions (approx.) 180cm x 60cm x 50cm
Price £700. Contact the artist 07500 118791 matt.smart@mail.com
