Sam Shmith’s sublime and cinematic scenes are the result of arduously compositing thousands of digital images from his vast archives. Focusing on his photographic archives as raw ingredients, Shmith uses these images to “paint” large-scale landscapes that sit between the real and the surreal. The imposed luminosity and the rich colours of the work further bring on a prevailing sense of the artificial, the synthetic. Shmith creates these scenes with the intent that the viewer should have the knowledge that these places are constructed, whilst at the same time convinced of their authenticity. Many of his photographs are taken from behind the glass of moving vehicles creating a sense of cocoonment from our natural environment.
Read MoreSam Shmith has recently been shortlisted for the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award (2011) with his work Untitled (In Spates 5).
In 2010 Sam Shmith was awarded GQ’s Artist of the Year. He was also a finalist in the National Photography Prize and again for the Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award (2010). He is a young emerging artist who is fast becoming a highly collectable artist. His works appear in the collection of Art Bank, Albury Art Gallery, influential collector Patrick Corrigan, National Gallery of Victoria and private collections throughout Australia and the United Kingdom.