OLIVER SMART
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fig. 2
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A wooden handle at the top is perhaps an abstract wooden head, also a reference to a roughly carved wooden puppet head.
This is the original handle for one of the wood saws found in fig 3 and so gives a material connection between these art works.
Polished with the hand grease of time used, lending rounded shape, wood becomes flesh growing from the metal structure
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Like an archeological robot machine holding, bicycle frame to structural torso.
Rotating as found as if by chance, a manufactured coincidence of component parts.
Slapdash yet precisely affecting the character of movement and giving to the form.
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This baseball bat I found floating on the river Lee with glass impregnated into the end.
A tool with a violent past, discarded evidence, crime scene, expression of violence.
Aged, historical objects morphing with a new context, meaning shifting through impressions
of each object one to the other passing through this assemblage, poetic and mechanical in the same dynamic present.

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Connections for movement soft hand soft
Resistant of directly joining one element to the other, propagating freedom, not holding tightly.
Liquid rather than solid movement shunning solidity and commitment mechanistic looseness and freedom.
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With time these sculptures change, they grow, they are updated.
Here due to an excess of movement a slip of packaging cardboard has been inserted to provide friction.
There is no hierarchy of value here all materials are of equal value in this poetic assemblage of expressive purpose.
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While out walking I recognise current drawing thinking shape curve manifesting in an old wheel barrow frame so this is what this is and how it seems that so much of this object searching and finding happens by chance.
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A favourite cafe close to an old studio of mine was moving premises and selling the old stools I had sat on to drink espresso for many years.
at this time I was searching with drawing for a shape and object for the plinth/foundation
of this piece.
I kept a souvenir of this exchange in the masking tape pricing, considering an assigned value of the component parts.
I turn the stool on its side, previous positionings are let go of in this structural location of change and transformation.
(I am almost convinced that surely the stool is disorientated from being turned on its side.)
A fleeting commitment to the joining of elements as these can be taken apart. Each part is a separate individual coming together in the relationship here as a whole.
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Unlikely mechanical assemblage of components lending idiosyncratic accuracies and roughnesses.
Bicycle chain, cable ties , golf cart wheels, wooden dowel, black cord. 
All of this mechanical cacophony is located on the aged plywood seat of the toppled stool.
The history of each object is given voice through the minimum of alteration they get to keep their marks , scratches , paint chips , breakages.
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On the underside of the stool is the driver’s brain where the rhythm is programmed and communicated to the motor.
Following on from the historic relationship between androids, automata and industrial machines (Vaucanson, his shitting duck and the industrial loom) This motor and controller is made for the mechanisation of factory production lines .
The motor is secured to the wooden base of a Victorian cash register which forms a major mechanical and formal aspect of fig 3.
Through the force of driving the gear train this seemingly solid platform flexes, offering
another subtlety of movement and exploring a surprising elasticity on the apparently rigid.
The signs of age and wear are written all over this object, pock-marked with the homes of previous fastenings. 
There is a jam session between objects old, new, ancient, modern, smooth, metallic, worn wood,
rusty metal, plywood, plastic all together like free jazz.
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A stainless steel cable meets an old chain link meets some black cord. This shifting dialogue between materials with a common purpose, maintaining a precarious agreement of functionality.
They are of the same line, different in character, form and structure. How they meet and converse requires maintenance, mediation and sacrifice on the part of the softer/fragile to the hard/robust or on the part of the rigid/brittle to the flexible/pliant.
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The reason for these shapes and indentations and perforations is now historic. The present requires a new approach where past design utility is exploited for a current expressive purpose.
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Hard soft hard where movement takes place.
Hard is the frame, form, structure.
Soft is the character of moving and pliancy
There is an ever present coincidence in the form and design of these old objects and how they conspire willingly to be this new whole.
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© Oliver  Smart 2022
  • Art Works
  • Drawings
  • Bio
    • Exhibitions
    • About >
      • Artist Statement
      • CV
      • nomad eclectics film
      • In my own words
  • Thoughts
  • Press
    • Press Release
    • Solo
    • Collaborations
  • Contact
    • Newsletter
    • Instagram
    • Puppetry