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Ian Smith | Good Grief |
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In 2003, Ian Smith celebrates 25 years of continuous outsider art activity. Having represented the UK at art fairs in New York, Lisbon, Nuremburg, Frankfurt, Kassel (Documenta) and on several US and Canadian tours in the 1980s, he has since concentrated on interactive public performance through his company Mischief La-Bas. As regular Master of Ceremonies for the NRLA however, he has been inspired to suggest new collaborative work and to get his hands dirty again. Having meddled in performance, dance, theatre, film, TV and radio, pop music, circus, street spectacle and sculpture, he relishes the opportunity to abuse the mediums of painting and digital manipulation with the help of Graeme Wilcox and Bevis Evans-Teush respectively. Why not? 'The real spiritual godfather of Smith's work may be George Orwell - not the maker of political parables but the literate leftist suspicious of the 'Loony Left' (including vegetarians and probably performance artists) - who is acutely interested in the precise delineation of the social meaning of dirty jobs and dirty words.' - Canadian Globe and Mail |