Function, desire
A way of categorising the multiple processes which contribute to artistic endeavour is to class them into operations of invention and judgement. One set of tasks generates information; the other selects and reduces it to only that which is viable.
Information overload is already a hazard in modern living. But artists form a social category which still, despite all post-modernist protests, rests on a tradition that placed the highest premium on "creativity". Therefore, they are information generating mechanisms. Sometimes they are mechanisms out of control - not knowing when to stop their invention in order to assess its viability.
Now Wayne Smith, as well as being extraordinarily technically skillful, is an information generator sans pareil. His nimble and questing mind skips from topic to topic as he becomes totally intoxicated with ideas. This makes him potentially an artist of immense promise.
But he has not learned the skill of sobering up from that conceptual binge every now and then. His imagination races on; he wants to do it all at once. In many of his works he does not allow a meaning - even an ambiguous one – to be confirmed by other cues within the work, but instead strives to add further uncorroborated information.
In April at THAT CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE under the name of Jo Smith - the shorter more anonymous title he felt suited his technological theme but proved to be yet another disorienting factor for the reception of his work - Smith displayed a range of extraordinarily intricate pieces. Here were masterful simulations of marble, corroded steel, and alloy metal all painted on canvas, masonite or card, incorporating also painted, photocopied and montaged images that had