Rowan Smith
‘With one small step from Mr. Neil Armstrong we reached a world that had seemed to reside outside of the reach of human experience. Yet, almost half a century later, the romantic longing for large-scale space travel, residence and communication with some yet unknown extraterrestrial force remains. This desire, a continual and unfocussed looking outwards, is linked both to the nostalgia born of our millennial uncertainty, and a looking forward to The Future, a vision simultaneously of apocalyptic dystopia and magical technological efficiencies and entertainments.
For, like the idea of outer space, the notion of The Future is in itself filled with nostalgic yearnings and anxieties. Why do we long for the future of the 1950s, buying toy tin robots with alarming zest? Why is it that when we think of the future, we still imagine a place of flying cars and household robots, fantasies we have been holding onto for over a century? How do we posit any individual identity when we know ourselves to be merely a speck of dust in the cosmos?
All of these are the questions that Smith posits in his work. Using the language of outdated retro-cool technology and handcrafted sculptures, Smith presents a series of works that subtly, sadly investigate a nostalgia for the future and an insatiable and unanswerable lust for something outside of our everyday experience.’
From The Ghosts of Future Past -
The Work of Rowan Smith
By Linda Stupart
Click here to download Ralph Borland’s essay ‘Terra Nova’
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2011
How Are You All Feeling Tonight?, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California
2009
If you get far enough away, you’ll be on your way back home, Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Cape Town
If You Get Far Enough Away, Youʼll Be On Your Way Back Home, Co-Op Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Wood, Association for visual Arts, Cape Town, South Africa
2008
Future Shock Lost, Whatiftheworld / Gallery
Selected Group Exhibitions
2010
Ampersand: A dialogue of contemporary art from South Africa & the Daimler art Collection, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, Germany
Twenty: South African sculpture of the last two decades, Nirox sculpture park, Johannesburg, South Africa
Ways of Seeing, ORE Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2009
Holiday, Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
Objects of a Revolution, Galerie Dominique Fiat, Paris
Social Pattern, Association for Visual Arts, Cape Town South Africa
Printing Money, South African Print Gallery, Cape Town
Wood, Association for visual Arts, Cape Town, South Africa
2008/9
Big Wednesday, WhatiftheWorld / Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2008
Prints and Editions, WhatiftheWorld Gallery, Cape Town South Africa
Greatest Hits 2007, Association for Visual Arts, Cape Town, South Africa
2007
3C- Committee and Critics Choice, AVA Gallery (2007)
2006
Creatures Great and Small, WhatiftheWorld / Gallery, Cape Town
Not Yet Famous: Nobody Likes Nothing, Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Cape Town
2003
Picnic, group show, as ‘Clive Murdock’ (collaborative pseudonym: Rowan Smith & Tony
Walters) Brendan Bell Roberts Gallery, curated by Andrew Lambrecht
Police Camera Above, collaboration as ‘Paint Drip Risks’ Long Street & Loop Street
* AVA Members Exhibition (2003)
Awards & Collections
Michaelis Prize, Top Graduate, Michaelis School of Fine Art (2007)
Hollard Collection, Johannesburg, South Africa (2008)
Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Grant, David Bermant Fellowship in Art an Technology, California Institute of the Arts (2010)
