Matt Smith combines the elegant with the incongruous to explore how narratives of history are manufactured and presented as truth. His ceramic sculptures reference the imagery of traditional taste, but in unlikely and incompatible combinations. A pair of Georgian Grand Tourists adapted as candlesticks are given a daubed glaze finish to suggesting how naive simplicity can underlie a veneer of sophistication. An accompanying group of wall scones are stacked with mismatched grouping of Classical collector’s motifs: china plates, exotic birds, and Italianate dolphins… In his textile Rococo portraits, background patterns define the facial features, as if these were characters shaped not as individuals but by social structure. At every step the works foreground the predictability of grand cultural narratives by subverting their usual forms.
