Kathryn Smith

I operate at the interface between studio work, curatorial projects and scholarly research. My studio practice is informed by forensic aesthestics and criminography, body doubles and secret histories, incorporating camera-based media, installation and performance. My scholarly work is focused on developing histories of avant-garde and experimental practices in recent South African art.

Recent curatorial projects include Dada South? (2009-2010); Bad Form: Things and Stuff (2009); the critical anthology One Million and Forty-Four Years (and Sixty Three Days) (SMAC, 2007); and acting as curatorial correspondent to Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev for both T1 (Torino Triennale 2005) and Revolutions – Forms that Turn, (2008 Biennale of Sydney).

Between 2009 and 2011, my Woodstock studio doubled as an informal project space called serialworks, showing experimental works by South African and international artists. serialworks is currently itinerant.

I have contributed to numerous catalogues, books, journals and magazines and most recently, authored a mid-career survey monograph on Barend de Wet. In 2009, I was commissioned by national broadcaster SABC2 to produce a short film for television, which featured a fictional artist character developed in collaboration with Cape Town-based crime novelist Margie Orford. Trauma Diorama 1: The Quarry also exists as a photographic portfolio and featured as an installation on the Goodman Gallery's Joburg Art Fair booth in 2010.

I am currently working on publishing a series of research-based projects that have been in development for several years, including an archive of documentary photographs of sites of high-profile violent crime made over an 8-year period; an exploratory documentary about abduction, imprisonment and serial rape in a Cape agricultural community; and a reinvestigation of the unsolved murder of Jacoba 'Bubbles' Schroeder.

See Sue Williamson's South African Art Now (Harper Collins) for a profile of my practice.