On The Other Hand was an exploration by artist Vicki Smith of the projects she engaged in over the last three decades. Visitors to the small gallery and viewers of the western window at The Refinery Artspace (Whakatū/Nelson) could use both digital and analogue tools to explore individual and collaborative works undertaken over the last three decades. Free Public events 6-8pm Thursday 4th Feb - Duologue - a conversation with co-founders of UpStage, showcasing the rebuild of this open-source software for networked performance (hands-on demo live at the event) 6-8pm Thursday 11th Feb - ADA Open Sandwich - a meet up of local digital artists, hosted by the Aotearoa Digital Artists (ADA) network ada.net.nz ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ Navigation: View the Flyer-Gallery map below: Archive: my grandfather's suitcase filled with sketchbooks, pages on display will change occasionally Early works: a collection mostly on paper, painting, drawing and prints including the woodcuts from the first exhibition in 1990 New Zealand Arts Festival Cafē (Wellington). Interactive Light Table: 1990s Slides of exhbitions in the 90s (Wellington, London) Ships pass in the Night: the OHP transparencies of migration stories from an immersive shadow puppet work installed in the Rose Gardens at the 2014 Light Nelson event. The work explores migration and the life cycle of tuna (long finned eels) our endemic and threatened toanga previously plentiful in this original mahinga kai site now traditional english rose garden. Approaches to Puke Ariki : the perspex print block created at a residency in Taranaki, this piece charts the destruction of coastline and the hill the Musuem and Library are named for, source material charts and information were accessed through the physical collections at Puke Ariki, a print is housed in the collection at Puke Ariki 2013 Pattern Recognition: a media art commision by Intercreate, a working woven QR code, created in collaboration with Aroha Timoti accessing the Westland Library online resources and made to hang in the Library. 2014 Performance Works Table : 'An internet Cafe' allowing exploration by leaflets and performance flyers for various work from 2002-2020 from immersive environmental experimental music through to the online performance work of Avatar Body Collision, and UpStage festivals, shows and the impending relaunch with the Mobilise-Demobilise performance series (2021) Oceans Mesh: a collaboration with Charlotte Sūnde and Alison Greenaway funded through Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge. Social and Biophysical Scientists were interviewed and a meta story was created as an invitation to take part in the interactive projection event for Light Nelson 2018 - the projected film and some shots insitu can be found at oceansmesh.net Strangers: 2018 Visual Art project - Nelson Fringe Festival a response to a given show title Ochre: 2019 created with Biochemical Scientist Marlesse Fairgray, a minerals to materials process of producing a useable creative productive out of an historic mine waste source. Ochre was a particpatory work where ten people were given a limited palette and created a piece using the premise ka mua ka muri (looking back to move forward) to explore connections to the coast and ideas for a more sustainable future. Exhibited at Left Bank Gallery Greymouth. BurnTime & Exploratorium: 2019 Dunedin, Christchurch, Nelson - a recreation of the Victorian era Campbell Stokes (sun recording device) still in use today for creating a burnt record of sunlight. A disused shop was filled with information and objects and was site for public workshops and expeditions - especially to view the Transit of Mercury (coincidentally also 250 years since Cook and his astronomers viewed it at Te Whanganui-o-Hei). A collaboration with Anthony Genet, the MetService, Nelson Weather and Dunedin Astronomical Society. Thanks to Creative Communities Nelson, Dunedin City Council and Dunedin Dream Brokerage. Listen to the Standing Room Only Interview Sounding: 2017-2020 an umbrella/sound shell and some of the artefacts from the audio and ambulatory work introduce Sounding a collaboration with Caro McCaw and a team of marina mammal experts, technologists and sound artists, created in response to the huge 'block offer' opening the opportunity for invasive oil and gas exploration around the coastlines of Aotearoa/NZ. The project can be explored at sounding.nz it is currently enroute back from Canada. With thanks to our many supporters https://sounding.nz/our-sponsors/ Library: hand made or published books about works or with images and writing by the artist or her collabortive works, some are downloadable ADA Media Reader || Centres and Peripheries || CyPosium - the book || Transitional Imaginary || Brokered Dreams || There is also some of the artefacts created for my work with Nelson City Council healthystreams.nz Te Wairepo (including Breathe) & Wakapuaka ~ bursting with life. Explore this project through the Wakapuaka StoryMap Venetian Obscura: 'Mirror characters' for humanimation of three vignettes created by GetFrocked (Lyn Russell, Sally Shaw and Vicki Smith) for the 2020 Nelson Fringe Festival (a filmed performance in a theatre with no audience due to Covid restrictions). Thanks to funding support from Nelson Creative Communities Finding Lucinda Fairweather: (In the window) an interactive fiction originally created with physical installations in six sites around the old shoreline Whakatū / Nelson for the 2016 Light Nelson. Finding Lucinda Fariweather is a story you play out through text on any internet enabled device using a very old (in the digital sense) game play. Each object offers a clue to a tale that switches from now to the victorian era Nelson and leads you to find a building that no longer exists. The looping video includes more clues and some of the text instructions you can use - by just choosing to go east west north or south you will visit all sites, in some of them you can 'interact' with people you might find there. Click on help if you are stuck. Created in Collaboration with Robert Carter. flf.geek.nz Artist statement || Contact Vicki (at) digitalsmith.nz Thanks to the generous time and energy contributed by so many towards realising this exhibition: especially Lyn Russll Design, Sally Shaw (GetFrocked and the edible extravaganza) and Faye Wulff at Community Art Works. Thanks to Janja at the Refinery Artspace, Chris Mason for his tech wizardry in recreating the light table, sounding and FLF install, John Paul Pochin for the laptops, Jim Mackay for lenses and advice, and organising the use of the window and screen from the original installation at the Nelson Provincial Museum. Above all else of course thanks to my family and friends without who this would never happen. We see life’s journey as a tracery in our hands - some read these lines like a map Vicki Smith uses hands as a device to examine a creative journey, from wielding drawing and making tools through to digital constructions and out to the virtual edges of online storytelling. Her childhood at the base of Tiritiri o Te Moana ( the southern alps) instilled a love of exploration and a keen interest in our environment. Vicki studied both sciences and arts as well as adult education at university. She earned a living through technical roles in forestry and fisheries, within media, web and the community and compulsory education sectors (alongside a myriad of other less complicated roles). This exhibition maps her creative journey alongside her vocational one beginning with her first exhibition in the fringe festival cafe in Wellington while working as a driver for Wellington city transport. A woven floor serves to navigate audiences through her practice. The silver warp as the bones of her practice, exploring existence through lenses of gender, identity, and place. The blue and green weft referencing land and ocean and pointing to impacts on our environment. Story narratives tread a strong pathway from the suitcase of musings and drawings to realised works of her own and with others. Participation and collaboration increasing both the pleasure in constructing form from ideas and engaging audiences in the messages inherent in the work. The weave forms a timeline and maps her work within the intersection of art, science and community situating much of her recent local work. This map can be read as a literal timeline of the contrasting vocational roles and creative explorations or perhaps it is the grid lines of the Holodeck inviting immersion into a virtual world. |