Artist Profile - Brittany Walker Smith

I think I always knew I was going to end up making things. I’ve always had an aesthetic appreciation thanks to my mother, who taught me there can be real joy in existing within a space that feels beautiful to you. But I do remember one particular moment in high school where it all consciously clicked into place.

I was lucky enough to have Lily Laita as my art teacher and, at the exact point where I was trying to figure out what my own work could even look or feel like, we spent a week in class talking about Judy Darragh’s Limbo sculptures at the Auckland Art Gallery. That was a real moment of “oh, art can do that? It can look like that?” Then the very next day in art history Lily introduced The Raft of the Medusa and I had the complete opposite reaction of “oh, painting can do that? It can make me feel like that?” I think I was probably always going to end up in art, but that was the moment I consciously realised what I was heading towards.

Honestly just the constant need to make things. Not even necessarily “art” but just things. If school gave us an assignment on the ocean was I going to write the essay? Absolutely not. Was I going to make a huge cardboard turtle instead? Definitely.

I was always trying to figure out how to build things out of whatever materials I could get my hands on. I think that urge to physically make and arrange things was probably the real beginning of me making art.

What materials don’t I work with? I think my material obsessions are usually things that are purposeless, frivolous and have more aesthetic affect than practical use. Over time that’s meant glitter, rhinestones, tinsel, velvet, faux fur, really any material that can help build into a kind of fantasy. I’ve always loved fake versions of luxury objects - fake diamonds, faux fur, plastic glamour - because in fantasy they don’t really need to be real to work. There’s something about interacting with those materials that lets me briefly exist inside the world they’re pretending to be.

Lately velvet painting has really become my obsession. I love that with velvet you only really need highlights and shadows to pull an image out of the surface, and the softness and lushness of the material does so much emotional work on its own. I’ll speak to other painters and watch them try not to touch their surfaces or deliberately rough things up for texture, meanwhile I’m happily draped over my lush velvet. There’s something about the softness, the theatricality and the necessary delicacy of painting on velvet that feels like the closest real-life version of the fantasy world I’m trying to build, and I think that feeling comes through in the work.

I try to walk the walk before I talk the talk, so a lot of my attraction to materials comes from spending time actually living around them. I spend a huge amount of time wandering through fabric stores and second-hand shops until something presents itself and has that immediate pull. Usually I know pretty quickly when a material feels right.

In the same way, I’m really drawn to things that are frivolous purely for the sake of being frivolous. Vintage posters with glamorous women on them that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual plot, romance novels that are so overblown they loop back around to sincerity, leopard print objects, chandeliers, ridiculous home décor. I love media like Absolutely Fabulous and Kath and Kim because there’s something very real to me about women committing fully to aesthetics, humour and excess. I also think a lot of my inspiration just comes from being around groups of women and the specific humour and every day struggles that exists between us.

Usually all of these things slowly collect together until an image, phrase or material suddenly clicks into place. I’ll be looking at a piece of crushed velvet or faux fur and realise it perfectly matches some strange emotional logic or fantasy I’ve been carrying around. Once that connection happens the work feels less like constructing an idea and more like making a world that already exists in my head physically real.

A complete and shameless indulgence in frivolity and female fantasy. A coping mechanism through aesthetics.

I was raised in a family that was almost exclusively women and I think that gave me a real appreciation for the ways women move through the day-to-day, the humour they develop, the aesthetics they build around themselves and the small acts of fantasy or performance that make things feel more bearable. So in a way, all women inspire me, but I’m especially interested in a kind of woman that almost feels fictional for a moment. Like seeing a woman walking to Pilates in full leopard print athleisure carrying an iced coffee like she’s entering a reality television show. I know if I spoke to her she’d be a real person with a full complicated life, but for that brief second she becomes this perfect image of someone fully indulging in her own frivolity and I find that really moving.

A lot of my work also connects to the figure of the bimbo, especially the way hyper-femininity and aesthetic excess are so often dismissed as shallow or unintelligent while other forms of obsession, collecting, escapism or stylisation are taken far more seriously. I’m really interested in the idea that if femininity is going to be devalued regardless, then you may as well go completely all in. There’s something powerful to me about refusing restraint and committing fully to glamour, fantasy, beauty and excess even while knowing people may dismiss it.

I’m inspired by anything purposeless, over-the-top home décor, uncomfortable fashion, chandeliers in inappropriate rooms, throwing a birthday party for your dog, knick-knacks endlessly circulating through second-hand stores. I think there’s real joy in objects that exist purely for pleasure, decoration or emotional attachment rather than function.

I’ve always thought that if I don’t absolutely love a work I’ve made then it probably isn’t worth showing, so usually my favourite work ends up being the most recent thing I’ve finished. In saying that, I Once Had a Dream I Had Sex With a Lobster has to be my favourite at the moment.

I think I’m especially proud of it because it became such a large part of my presentation at the Aotearoa Art Fair. There was something very satisfying about publicly presenting a painting that featured both a (somewhat) completely accurate self-portrait and a lobster, an object and symbol that I’ve developed a slightly unreasonable obsession with over time. The work feels very representative of my practice in that sense; excessive, sincere, a little ridiculous, but also strangely emotionally true to me.

I think there’s something really important in allowing yourself frivolity and fantasy, especially in a world that constantly asks people to justify everything they enjoy. Sometimes things can just be beautiful, excessive, funny or comforting, and that’s enough.