Sally Smart

Femmage Frieze, Mixed media installation, dimensions variable, 1998-2010

My work has for a number of years engaged with issues of identity and gender.

This has been a sustained feminist discourse and central to developing the work conceptually and technically. Since the mid-1990s I have used painted cut-outs to create large scale installation works primarily made of painted fabric with the collage and photomontage elements pinned directly to the gallery wall. The use of materials is integral to the conceptual unfolding of this work, the process of cutting, pining, staining and stitching – and their association with women’s practices.

The relationship between the body, thought and culture are recurring themes in my work, along with neglected women’s histories, as subjects for contemporary art. In the work for OV Gallery, I am constructing an assemblage piece titled “Femmage Frieze,” this series was initiated in 1998 and has been variously configured since then. The work can respond in a site-specific way, traversing the walls of the gallery space with the pinned elements. Since the first time “Femmage Frieze” was exhibited new elements have been added, both in imagery and in the methodologies used (photographic and silkscreened elements).

The word femmage was used by the American feminist and theorist Miriam Schapiro in 1976 to describe work made by women historically and the multitude of techniques, including collage, photomontage and embroidery, that women have used. Femmage for me then is a conceptual term used to describe the idea of women’s relationship (historical and contemporary), to the process of collage and connections to feminist politics.