Volume: Collocations

Collocations
2005 - 2022

“With wit and an ironically dispassionate lens, Smith’s focus reaches far beyond the aisles and shelves of your local library… By focusing on the minutiae of the magazine stacks, and blowing them up, Smith heralds the benefits of open minds and a democratic tradition. It its more than just educative to watch her read rather than judge a book by its cover.” - Don Abbot, Art New Zealand

Large scale installations from the Volume series, coined Collocations, deal with with themes of association and disassociation. The titles, repeated one after the other on the library shelves, represent a cultural heritage, a kind of serial aspiration. Their incantatory power suggests that identity and culture have always been a matter not of neat categories, but of vague associations.