harrissmithart: A Reference

Albert Renger-Patzsch

Durer

Bill Brandt

Cecil Beaton

Cindy Sherman

Edward Steichen

Frank Eugene

Henri Le Secq

Jacques Henri Lartigue

Julia Margaret Cameron

Karl Blossfeldt

Mario Giacomelli

Masahisa Fukase

Philip Guston

Robert Doisneau

Robert Frank

Edward Steichen

Thomas Ruff

William Eggleston

William Fox Talbot

Nicole Page-Smith's early experiences started when showing with American painters in the early 1990's. Among them was Philip Guston. This lead to an exploration of American and European, sculptors and photographers. Working in the medium of sculpture, drawing and photography, Page-Smith does a lot of research. Nicole Page-Smith always finds it great to travel, to view, not only people, Page-Smith discovers in books, magazines, the library, internet usage and newspapers, but artists Page-Smith is not aware of in museums, commercial galleries and foreign bookshops. Every country has different people they are supporting or bringing out of the woodwork, at any one given time, with retrospectives and big museum exhibitions often being a blessing. Nicole Page-Smith lives in a small village, at the end of the South Pacific near the South Pole and this does have its advantages and disadvantages. Nature predominates where museums have too small a budget for many foreign exhibitions. Like many of the countries, Nicole Page-Smith visits, there are discoveries to be made in her own country. New Zealand is predominantly untapped, as there are few people exhibiting internationally and few New Zealand artists books are distributed overseas. Nicole Page-Smith spent the first thirty three years of her life, in Australia, and they suffer the same fate, often appearing too parochial and insular, to the Europeans and Americans. Mostly, well educated Europeans and Americans, with a very big diet for culture, only want to see the best examples a country has to offer, and they are not always the people on display in the public museums and commercial gallery sector. Sometimes in any country, big or small, the best artists are overlooked and it takes talent for rediscovery.

More recently, Nicole Page-Smith has been diligently culture consuming, in her small village town, while writing books and taking photographs. For Nicole Page-Smith, the internet proves a valuable resource. Nicole Page-Smith's photographs reference her drawing of the past forty years, Page-Smith started drawing seriously at the age of seven. The past and the present are also a valuable reference for Page-Smith's photography, and her photography refers to the whole genre of the medium of photography, of the relatively recent past history of photography, spanning one hundred and fifty year or more. Some of what Nicole Page-Smith's recent photography refers to and is inspired by, can be viewed above.

Monday 6 July 2015

A Reference