Matt Smith

Matt explores how history is a constantly selected and refined narrative, that presents itself as a fixed and accurate account of the past. Using techniques of institutional critique and artist intervention, his work investigates how museums can be reframed from an outsider, often LGBTQ, perspective by taking objects and repurposing them in new situations, or creating ‘lost objects’. Solo shows have included Queering the Museum (2010) at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Flux: Parian Unpacked (2018) at the Fitzwilliam Museum and Losing Venus (2020-2022) at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. In 2016 Matt was awarded an AHRC funded practice-based PhD from the University of Brighton exploring the intersection of contemporary art practice and queer identities. From 2017-2022 Matt was Professor of Craft at Konstfack University in Stockholm and in 2016 was artist-in-residence at the V&A where he explored how historic figurines could address questions of representation within the museum. His residency at the Centre for Print Research in 2023 will build on this work. At the Centre for Print Research Matt will 3D scan existing ceramic figurines and digitally manipulate and rescale them before reprinting them in ceramic and firing them. These new figurines will form part of a planned future large-scale solo show. The source figurines are a combination of bought figurines and figurines from museum collections. The work aims to unpick the ceramic figurine from numerous points of view, including race, class, gender, taste and sexuality. This residency will technically challenge Matt’s practice into a new way of working and test his ceramic knowledge drawing on the expertise of researchers in the CFPR.