This new body of work evolved from travelling back and forth between Ireland and Hong Kong, where Smith lived for over 11 years. The paintings reflect an internal picture of lived, remembered, and imagined experience. Influenced by zen, ink painting, abstraction, and photography, these are records of unfixed and fluid experience.
While the works usually take the form of ‘landscape’ the driving concept is the transient nature of the physical world and our slippery perceptions of it. These ideas appear through the dissolving qualities in the paint surface, the represented image shifts and begins to unfix itself. The artist explains that strong visual memories of living in Hong Kong have anchored themselves in his mind and at the same time, much of those 11 years have now faded like a dream. The compression of living in tiny spaces, seeing the sun through layers of haze, the silver tinge on a blue sky, the visceral neon skyline, the perpetual energy and the lack of stars. These and countless other lived impressions form the basis of the work he made there and since his return to Ireland in 2016.
These landscape works all carry the sense of compression and influence of living in one of the most densely populated areas on earth. That period in Hong Kong, where oppressive greys and vivid neon sit side by side has deeply informed much of Smiths feeling towards how we live with and without nature. Each painting looks for the animation, space, energy, and decay that vibrates beneath the world around us and our perception of it.
Artist biog
David Smith is an Irish artist from County Mayo who works predominantly in painting but also in film/photographic/music works. He has held solo shows in Hong Kong, Ireland, and the US. He participated in the Hong Kong art prize and in the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture. His works have been featured in 9 out of 10 International Painting Annuals (INPA) published by Manifest press. He taught painting and foundation studies at the Savannah College of Art & Design in Hong Kong before returning to Ireland in 2016.
Recent exhibitions include the RHA Annual Exhibition, the RUA Annual, RUA RED Winter Open and Second Summer at The Dock. His film Eó Mughna’s Lament recently screened at Cannes Short Film Festival and at the CICA museum in South Korea. Two other films; Nemeton and Abhartach (collaboration with composer Siobhan Cleary) premiered in early 2023. His paintings are featured in Contemporary Art Collectors book in 2023. He completed a 2-year artist’s residency at The Dock in Leitrim between 2021 and 2023. Gaussian Blur is his first solo exhibition in Dublin. He currently lives and works in Sligo.
www.davidsmith-studio.com
Instagram @daithismith
#gaussianblur
Image: 01. David Smith, First Light, Forest Edge, 2024, Oil on birch ply, 25 x 20cm, Image courtesy of the artist.
02. David Smith, Sunrise, Lake Mist, 2024, Oil on birch ply, 32×40 inches, 80 x 100cm, Image courtesy of the artist.
03. David Smith, Surfers, Rain Showers, 2024, oil on birch ply, 40 x 50cm, Image courtesy of the artist.
