b. 1978, United Kingdom

Anj Smith Biography

‘I love the idea that painting, pointless technologically, can still hypnotise and seduce us. For me, this is where the uniquely profound nature of painting is located, as no other medium offers this specific legacy. Its multiple deaths, resuscitations and evolutions make it especially apt in negotiating the great global & personal uncertainties of now. This difficult, baggage-ridden, faltering yet essentially surviving medium enables me to excavate often-overlooked art histories. These then filter down, combining with my lived experiences to form the layers of the work. Painting can facilitate the complexity of all of this, allowing me to explore the very edges of representation.’

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Anj Smith’s intricately rendered paintings explore issues of identity, eroticism, mortality, and fragility. Within her remarkably detailed works, wildly feral landscapes, ambiguous figures, textiles, and rare and exotic flora and fauna are used, to investigate the possibility of a contemporary sublime. Drawing upon sources as disparate as the works of Lucas Cranach, and the couture of Madam Grès (as examples), Smith weaves archaic traditions and contemporary signs together into a personal cosmology. In Smith’s luscious visual language she embraces the instability of meaning, exploring shifting boundaries, disintegration and the liminal. Her paintings are rich in detail, colour and texture, collapsing strict definitions of portraiture, landscape and still-life whilst allowing elements of each to coexist.

Text courtesy Hauser & Wirth.

Anj Smith
featured artworks

Artist's Tools II by Anj Smith contemporary artwork painting
Anj Smith Artist's Tools II, 2023 Oil on linen
55.9 x 87 x 1.9 cm
Hauser & Wirth Request Price & Availability
Echo by Anj Smith contemporary artwork sculpture, print
Anj Smith Echo, 2014 Zinc on etching paper
12.7 x 16.2 cm
Hauser & Wirth Request Price & Availability
Rosemarinus by Anj Smith contemporary artwork painting
Anj Smith Rosemarinus, 2023 Oil on linen
79 x 61 cm
Hauser & Wirth Request Price & Availability

Anj Smith
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Represented by this
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Hauser & Wirth contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong
Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris +8
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